From: Steve Davies (steve365@btinternet.com)
Date: Sun Jun 01 2003 - 06:57:46 MDT
>
> Once at university, I chanced (while heading down the wrong
> corridor in the library) upon a huge fat volume entitled "Being
> and Time", or "Time and Nothingness", or something like that,
> written by one of the usual suspects Sartre or Heidegger.
> I took it over to a table and sat down. The next thing
> that I remember is that the book was back at its place on
> the shelf, and that I had a splitting headache. I even
> stayed away from that part of the library henceforth.
I know the feeling! This must have been the dreadful Heidegger (Sartre is
comprehensible). I have tried to read Being and Time several times and still
can't understand it. I have the strange experience of seeing lots of words
that individually make sense, arranged into sentences which when read make
no sense at all. I know what you mean about Hayek too - the problem is he's
a native German speaker. There is definitely something about German
vocabulary and syntax that doesn't translate well into French or English. If
you listen to simultaneous translators at an international meeting you can
always tell when the speaker is a German because the translators sit silent
for long periods while the speaker rabbits on. They're waiting for the verb
at which point the long string of words (sort of) makes sense. SD
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