Parvis Emad & Kenneth Maly: RÜCKEN

The phenomenological kinship among words that gather around rücken, namely entrücken, verrücken  , Rückung, Entrückung  , Verrückung, Ruck, berücken, and Berückung, provides an important clue for bringing into translation the enactment-character of being-historical thinking. The word rücken can be brought into English with move or remove. And this means that rücken can be readily translated with variants of move and remove. However, discussion of Zeit  -Raum   in sections 238-242 makes it clear that understanding the enactment-character of being-historical thinking and reflecting this understanding in translation depends on the success of the translation in accounting for the difference between moving and removing in rücken. We heeded this difference in our translation by rendering entrücken with "to remove unto," Entrückung with "removal unto," rücken with "moving," and — depending on the context — sometimes with "shifting." However, we rendered verrücken and Verrückung with "displace" and "displacing," or "displacement," because both German words manifest the movement that occupies the core of the experience of man as he is dis-placed into Da-sein  : these words stand   for the profound recasting and transformation of man.

We faced an altogether different situation   in attempting to render berücken and Berückung into English. Guided by what Heidegger accomplishes in section 242, "Time-Space as Ab-ground" — one of the most fascinating sections of Contributions-and understanding his being-historical analysis of "time," and "space," we reflected his understanding in our translation by rendering berücken and Berückung with moving that charms and charming-moving-unto. This compound reflects the orienting power which, as Berückung, comprises the core of Heidegger’s analyses of "space" and "spatiality" - inseparable as these analyses are from those of "time" and "temporality" in the context of being-historical thinking. We decided that "charming" was the most appropriate English word to carry the crucial nuances of "captivating," "fascinating," and "alluring" — all of which inhere in Berückung. The other two words in this family of words, i.e., Ruck and Rückung, we rendered with shift and shifting.

The manner in which Contributions makes use of the word Auseinandersetzung   — a word as often used in German academic philosophy as perhaps the words "discussion," "dispute," and "argument" in English academic philosophy-requires that we discuss our renditions of this word in connection with the preceding deliberations on rücken as a related word. The main reason for including Auseinandersetzung in the present discussion of rücken and related words is not   that Auseinandersetzung is a member of this family of words. Plainly it is not. The main reason for this inclusion is that, as Heidegger uses Auseinandersetzung here in Contributions, there is a phenomenological kinship between Auseinandersetzung and rücken as well as verrücken and Verrückung. It is our understanding that when Auseinandersetzung appears in several sections of "Playing-Forth" and elsewhere in Contributions, the word assumes an orienting power that is purely being-historical, which the word does not have in its "normal" usage. When Heidegger talks about Auseinandersetzung in connection with the "first" and the "other beginning," he does not primarily and exclusively have in mind a "debate" or an "argumentative relation" between these "beginnings"-as if these "beginnings" were "events" that are extant and accessible to historiography. Rather, the word Auseinandersetzung indicates a specific manner in which philosophical thinking gets dis-placed, is moved unto and shifts into these beginnings. In order to reflect this understanding in our translation, we decided to render Auseinandersetzung with "contention," "setting into perspective," "setting apart," "coming to grips with," and "encounter." In some cases the word Auseinandersetzung has a more usual connotation; there we translated it with "debate" or "discussion." Each decision was implemented according to the context and based on the insight that these contexts merit slightly different renditions.