Utopia of Understanding

Donatella Ester Di Cesare is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" and of Jewish Philosophy at the Collegio Rabbinico Italiano. She is the author of many books, including Grammatica dei tempi messianici; Gadamer; and Ermeneutica della finitezza. Niall Keane is Assistant Lecturer in Philosophy at Mary Immaculate College and the translator of Mauro Carbone's An Unprecedented Deformation: Marcel Proust and the Sensible Ideas, also published by SUNY Press.

Preface

1. Being and Language in Philosophical Hermeneutics

Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Linguistic Turn
Which “Turn”?
From Heidegger to Gadamer: Language as Dwelling, Refuge, Shelter, Exile
“The History of a Comma”
Gadamer’s Self-Interpretation
Understanding as Middle Term and Mediation
Language and Linguisticality
Searching for the “Right” Word
“Being” Twice: The Speculative Passage from Being to Being-Language
The Universal “There” of the Word
Self-Overcoming: The Movement of Hermeneutics
The Understanding of Being: Hermeneutics Facing Ontology
The A-Metaphysical Dimension of Philosophical Hermeneutics
A Philosophy of Infinite Finitude

2. The Hermeneutic Understanding of Language

Heidegger and Derivativeness of Assertion
Aristotle’s Lesson
Hermeneutics Between Semantic Lógos and Apophantic Lógos
The Logic of Linguistic Praxis
As if “assertions fall from the sky…” The Analytic Artifice
Assertion, Method, and the Power of Technology
The Tribunal of Assertions
Hermeneía: From the Said to the Un-Said
Speculum: The Speculative Movement of Lanuage
Beyond Hegel: The Dialectic of Finite and Infinite
The Truth of the Word
The Hermeneutic Listening to Language

3. Translation and Redemption

“…one shall no longer understand the lip of the otherI.” Babel
Languages in the Diaspora
“Love without Demands”: Translation in the Age of Romanticism
From the Original to the Originary: On Heidegger
Giving Voice to the Foreign Voice: The Translation of the Torah
The Dialogue of Languages: On Benjamin
“Pure Language” and Messianic Silence

4. Exiled in the Mother Tongue

“Exile” in the Jewish Tradition
“How Much Home Does One Man Need?”
Exile from the Land, Exile from the Language
On the Mother Tongue
In the Firmament of Rosenzweig: The Holy Language and the Language of the Guest
If German is the Language of Origin
“What Remains? The Mother Tongue Remains”: On Hannah Arendt
My Language Which is of the Other: Derrida and Monolingualism
Language Forbids Ownership
The Exile of Language

5. The Dialogue of Poetry

Paul Celan as a Witness to Hermeneutic Dialogue
The Everyday Word and the Poetic Word
Poetizing and Interpreting
“Your irrefutable witness”
Your I and My Thou: The Universality of Poetry
The Flow of Dialogue and the Crystal of Poetry
The “Soul’s Refrain”

6. Understanding Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction

Paris 1981: An “Improbable Debate”
Hermeneutics and Deconstruction: Which Difference?
Derrida and Hermeneutics: Plaidoyer for Interruption
Gadamer and Deconstruction: “…at the beginning of a dialogue”
On the Language of Metaphysics and on Language in General
The Being-for-the-Other of Language
Wanting to Say, Wanting to Understand
“Comprendre c’est égaler”? On Nietzsche
Understanding is Understanding Differently
On Accord and Discord
Heidelberg 2003: Starting from that Interruption
“The world is gone…” Dialogue after Death
Thinking, Carrying, Translating
The Blessing of the Hand, the Blessing of the Poem
Stars and Constellations

7. Utopia of Understanding

U-topia, Topia, Utopia: On Gustav Landauer
Celan, Poetry and the “Revolution of the Breath”
Breaking the Silence: Voice and the Absolute Vocative
January 20. The Date and the Circumcised Word
Speaking Ever-Yet?
The Language-Grille
Straitening, Anguish, Anxiety: On the Limit-Situation
The Other of the Limit, the Limit of the Other: The You is the Lever of the I
Understanding to live, Living to Understand: Auschwitz
Átopos. The Out of Place of the Stranger
The Tent of Encounter
“…The Language That Wandered With Us”
The Time of the Promise
North of the Future
The Word of Conspiracy

Index