A conversation and a letter. Heidegger, Derrida, and the (un)translatable East

Abstract

This text was born out of a curious parallelism. Both Heidegger and Derrida happened to be, at one point of their biographical and philosophical paths, before a Japanese man. Also, they both decided to write about this “encounter” (a notion that has a degree of importance in both their philosophies). In doing this, they decided to employ and invest into this alterity and availability, although differences are readily noticeable. Their respective medium choices — for Heidegger the deep, enclosed intimity of language as Gespräch, for Derrida the travelling openness of a letter (what else?) — can be seen as a first glimpse of their final endeavors. Presenting the oncoming questions, — somehow reducible to one, “How can we communicate with the other/ Other?” — through a series of crossed chapters eventually focusing on Derrida, is justified by the impression that, as in polyphony, each of the two voices/tracks [traces] reveals something hidden in the other. Laying the one upon the other lets not only perceive their dissonances and disparities, but lets emerge from their own supplementary encounter — their playing tag — a set of subtler, flavorful questions.

Keywords

• Philosophy of translation
• Japanese
• Deconstructivism