Translation and anarchy

The translator’s task is shaped by something akin to what Hegel, in his Phenomenology of Spirit, calls the ‘unhappy consciousness’ – that is, the sense that any translation can never fully capture the essence of its original. The idea of a fundamental inadequacy inherent in translation is explicit in Rosenzweig’s theological writings and correspondence, as well as in Benjamin’s essay on the translator’s task. In this sense, the translator must always confront an unattainable arché, whether it be the original text, the Logos, or a pre-Babelic language. A similar dynamic emerges in Hegel’s treatment of Übersetzung between concept and representation in the introductory sections of the last edition of the Encyclopedia. However, a somewhat anarchic reading of Hegel suggests that this inescapable verticality is not the only way to approach translation dialectically. By briefly examining the idealist critique of Kant this essay proposes a different perspective on the relationship between original and translation, one informed by notions such as ‘ontological increase’ and Wirkungsgeschichte (as articulated in Gadamer’s Truth and Method). Translation, as a hermeneutic activity, is inherently aporetic and inexhaustible; it contains an anti-metaphysical potential and is, in some sense, ‘an-archic’ – at least, in the sense proposed by Reiner Schürmann’s ‘principle of anarchy’.