Deconstruction and Reconstruction

Wittgenstein‘s translators seem to wrestle with the knowledge of lan-guages to translate the philosophical writings. This is no mystery. From early times, translation was only applied to literary translation, including firstly the sacred writings of the Bible (Nida 1964). The struggles of the metalinguistic texts are regarded as the creation of writing literary texts in pure fiction: novels, poems, and other literary genres. Yet the genre of fictional texts is more than verbal grammar of rhetoric, giving a meaning-ful idiom for specific cultural experience to transmit emotional meaning to the readers. The questions of the translation of scientific and technical texts in astronomy and advances in water technology of agriculture, in-cluding philosophical manuscripts originally in Latin, Greek, and Arabic, did not come seriously into question until much later (Montgomery 2000).

Since the Enlightenment, man has liberated himself into the freedom of man as revolutionary citizen in society. The obedient citizenship an-chored his liberty not in God as creator, but in the ―natural‖ rights of man itself, realizing the individual humanity of the equality of all citizens in self-knowledge, self-expression, and self-fulfilment. The philosophers of the Enlightenment (Locke, Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, Goethe, and others) no longer wrote in ―archaic‖ Latin language, but wrestled with

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naming the cultural mechanics of writing in the new technique of mod-ern languages, which were now systematically used as ―modmod-ernized‖

instrument of literary writings, the science of mechanics, physics, and mathematics, as well as in the fields of biology, psychology, and history.

This revolution causes that the scholars articulate their desire to learn, always entailing a sense of loss of the ancient disciplines of metaphysics, logic, and ethics.

Philosophy is converted into a natural science, beginning with empir-ical observation and ending with describing human experience. The phi-losophers speak our language and live in the actual world, but the in-strument of textual and cultural criticism does not systematically and coherently substitute the scientific or intellectual practice for the dra-matic contrasts of language with cultural overtones. The personal and social language of philosophy reconstructs human thought out of ―sim-ple‖ ideas into the stream of human sensations. Even after the belle époque, the passions and imaginations of Wittgenstein‘s religious parables and popular metaphors were controversial works in philosophy. His rational and irrational texts were regarded as scientific or unscientific philosophy.

Philosophical texts are neither literature nor fiction, but give mean-ingful use of reality in the public and personal work-tool of the use of language. Philosophical language contains formal reasoning of logic, but is partially clothed in the fiction and non-fiction of scientific language.

Exploring the primary activity is the science of discovery to understand the truth of the philosopher, in this case the truth of Wittgenstein‘s forms of reasoning. The exchange of philosophical knowledge through culture in time and place in translation explains that the interpreters and translators had to use different levels of idealistic knowledge to explore scientific language. Wittgenstein‘s reasoning is further ―ornamented‖ into the more poetic composition of style in sound, rhythm, image, rhetoric, paragraphs, tone, and voice to reach the accurate understanding of the textual universe of philosophical reasoning.

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Philosophy can be defined as the practice of exercising the philoso-pher‘s curiosity and intelligence in writing. Philosophy conducts an in-quiry into the ultimate reality and vivid essence of things (meaning ideas, phenomena, objects, events) in our environment. Philosophical language has the strict methodology of scientific metalanguage transformed into metascience, in which the logical type of scientific language has turned into the story about the specific metamessages of the author-philosopher (Rey-Debove 1986; for prefix meta-, see Hubig 1986). The ―ordinary‖

language is the first ―object language being any language which is an object for investigation‖ of the elements of syntactic and semantic facts, while the second ―metalanguage” is the metamessage of ―any language signifying some other language‖ describing the new object-language of philosophy.

This means that ―ordinary‖ language is not designed to state the truth about language, but that philosophical texts are considered as exact cases expressing the signs-about-signs in the sense of ―metasigns” (Morris 1971, p. 256). In the metasigns, the truth of order (and disorder) of the private meta-vocabulary and meta-terminology is expressed in words and sen-tences. Paradoxically, metalanguage directly analyzes philosophical dis-course, but remains indirectly formulated in ―ordinary‖ language.

The philosophical translator is a multingual talent with no problems with the philosophical language. But the translator needs to deconstruct the metalinguistic (or meta-analytic) activity to describe the logical or technoscientific meta-work of the original philosopher. The translator‘s

―art of deconstruction‖ (Norris and Benjamin 1988, pp. 35-36) explores, firstly, the philosopher‘s cognitive synthesis to be able to analyze the text-generating processes involved in the philosophical arguments; and second-ly, the description of the rational criteria for evaluating the philosophical metalanguage; while, thirdly, attempting to explain the practice of research in the philosophical work involved in the translational work.

The translation of philosophical texts is further constructed with the author‘s strategy, which the translator needs to examine to discover the

―semantic, stylistic, axiological‖ meaning of the shifts between prototext

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and metatext in order to take the decision to translate through the logical and coherent method of translation. After the deconstruction, the con-structive policy of the knowledge counts for the translator as the idea of truth (Norris and Benjamin 1988, pp. 16-20), because the translator‘s

―style-forming act‖ can rival the constant quest of the author‘s authentic-ity of the philosophical truth (Popoviĉ c.1975, p. 30, see pp. 12-13; see Tötösy de Zepetnek 1998, pp. 233-235). In the translator‘s system of arguments, the ―ratio of meaning [can be transformed from] invariants to variants (…) through semantic shifts‖ between prototext and metatext and vice versa (Popoviĉ c.1975, p. 30, see pp. 12-13; see Tötösy de Zepetnek 1998, pp. 233-235). The policy of the translator intends to make the linguistically strange texts reachable for anonymous readers as familiar instrument for their philosophical reasoning.

Popoviĉ‘s translational method states that the expressive and evalua-tive relation between prototext and metatext can be studied through the

―stylistic aspect according to the degree of homology between prototext and metatext‖ (Popoviĉ c. 1975, p. 30; see Tötösy de Zepetnek 1998, p.

234). The art of deconstructing homology is derived from Derrida‘s writings, who undermined any fixed interpretation to make a conflicting textual meaning (Norris and Benjamin 1988). This method has been applied to the reaction to finding the same word, sentence, or fragment in the source language and reconstruct these again with ―different‖

meanings in another language (Popoviĉ c. 1975, p. 30; see Tötösy de Zepetnek 1998, p. 234). Deconstruction in translation involves the ―tex-tual scope of the contact between prototext and metatext‖ questioning of the faculties that reflect ―only individual elements or levels of the text or does it refer to the text as a whole‖ (Popoviĉ c. 1975, p. 30; see Tötösy de Zepetnek 1998, p. 234). The logocentric drive for knowledge of the unknown elevates truth above the initial lines of the philosophical text, enabling the translator to construct the next step: the ―transfor-mation which the prototext can undergo in the metatext‖ producing in the translation different syntactic and semantic forms of continuity with

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the author ― Popoviĉ‘s ―initiative, selective, reducing, and complimen-tary continuity‖ (c. 1975, p. 30; see Tötösy de Zepetnek 1998, p. 234).

The new translation can mean that the continuity with the author can also imply some discontinuity with no confidence in the author.

These questions are important in the attempt to translate Wittgen-stein‘s new philosophical style, which can be translated or ―pseudo-translated‖ according to Wittgenstein‘s use of ―ordinary‖ language as his instrument of philosophical metalanguage. Wittgenstein‘s paradox re-wrote the old rhetoric of philosophy to create his special meta-language.

Imagine Wittgenstein‘s constant quotation, revision, and retelling of his own words, sentences, and paragraphs to re-construct the fragmentary scripts into the variety of his ―movements of thought‖ (Denkbewegungen).

The translator‘s absolute knowledge must be based absolutely on the imperatives of the close observation and intelligent experiment of Witt-genstein‘s style of language to attempt to describe the hidden pseudo-reality of what his textuality would be significant and meaningful for his philosophy of language. Despite all the quotations of Wittgenstein‘s expressions in style, his style is not an ordinary-language philosopher and not directly available to ordinary human observation, but can perhaps be known by theoretical inference to study his philosophical works. Witt-genstein seemed to talk in mixed genres of metalanguage about what the readers could possibly understand by his modernized perspective of re-stylizing mathematics, religion, politics, and arts.

Wittgenstein expanded the doctrine of logicism, later called the ―logi-cal turn‖ (Rorty ([1967] 1992) of language. Logicism was advanced by the technical-scientific approaches of Hegel and Carnap, and based on the pragmatic reasoning of language by logico-semiotician Charles S.

Peirce as deduction, induction, and abduction (Gorlée 2016). The ―lin-guistic turn‖ had two aspects: firstly, it gave rise to general philosophy as a theory of human language, and, secondly, the language of philosophy has itself become a part of its own subject matter and become from object studied the analysis or self-analysis itself. The German-Austrian doctrine

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of ―logical positivism‖ or ―logical empiricism‖ worked with Hegel‘s dia-lectical logic of handling one concept (thesis) which inevitably generates its opposite (antitheses) to generate the interaction of these in the new concept (synthesis). Logical empiricism had, in a negative sense, aban-doned the previous history of positivism, but, still in the positive sense, it defended the new word-tool of language with culture, whereby no idea has a fixed meaning and no form of reality has a static meaning. The human mind is observed as the active, formative agent of change, devel-oping free ideas in the system of language to realize the changes from the identity of the speaker. The search for truth in language is the eternal goal of the philosopher‘s tool of language, whose task is to uplift Witt-genstein‘s right or wrong wordplay coming from individual speakers into the public and social language of language-games. The pure reason of logic and philosophy (including the field of mathematical formulas) has become for today‘s readers the logic of philosophy.

The philosophers of the ―linguistic turn‖, including forerunner Witt-genstein, often had problems in distinguishing philosophy of language from etymology, philology and other general linguistic terms. Indeed, not all conceptual, analytic, or linguistic problems are philosophical; and not all philosophical problems are conceptual, analytic, and linguistic mis-takes. Philosophical problems can not always be resolved through word-play in language, although many ambiguities and contradictions can be abandoned and removed through the logic of philosophy (Scheffler 1979). The truth of science is shared with other disciplines; but uses the firm beliefs of truth in the language-based systems of cultural signs, changing with age and time. This makes philosophy often problematic to distinguish from other scientific disciplines. Consequently, it appears that Wittgenstein‘s philosophical style (Schulte 1990) often comes from

―elsewhere‖: the literary critic, linguist, rhetorician, philologist, and even the theologian, anthropologist, and psychologist (Gray 1969). Wittgen-stein created thereby for the readers a grey zone addressed to the mixed science of translation theory.

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Wittgenstein thought of himself primarily as the cultural stylist of his times. By the political force of circumstance, he worked in an adopted country and had to write at a distance from, or even outside, his cultural homeland, Austria. In his writings, he did not distance himself from standard Austrian-German language, his native language. Wittgenstein wrote in a particular language; his usual metalanguage was the logical vari-ety of his ordinary language. This subregister of actual language made his prose enjoyable for many readers, but it must be stressed that the vital quotations of Wittgenstein‘s sentences, observed ―everywhere‖ in his writings and documents, must have in philosophy a limited value of truth. Setting off one part of a sentence from another, or drawing artistic attention to a word or phrase, the quoted metatexts can dispute, play, or inspire the readers, but Wittgenstein scholarship is even thick with (self)complaints. This means that Wittgenstein‘s metalanguage has been textually misread and contextually misunderstood.

This paradox raises many problems as to the translatability of Witt-genstein‘s philosophical metatexts, which must have its own structure of reality in Wittgenstein‘s forms of metareality, but can hardly be correctly translated. The translation of Wittgenstein‘s philosophical discourse must be regarded like a critical discussion with oneself (the reader or outside receiver), dealing with the linguistic interaction between source language and target language. While critical skills of philosophical style in language are crucial elements of this investigation (or auto-investigation), the translation of philosophy is far from a straightforward transaction. The translator must work to generate a logically self-evident version of trans-lation closely following the original piece. Transtrans-lational training and practice are certainly not marginal aspects of philosophical translation, but absolutely central to the primary job of the translation to approxi-mate the conceptual clarification of the syntactic construction and se-mantical arguments involved by Wittgenstein.

The translation creates a tension between the clarity of the philosoph-ical concepts in the original text and the abstract interpretation of

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ent experts of Wittgenstein‘s language philosophy. The translation is a concrete interpretation of the single translator, which is believed as a true document. Nevertheless, the philosopher is not merely a logical individ-ual with a systematic critical discussion. The metalanguage has developed from basic beliefs into the historical presuppositions and linguistic impli-cations of the philosophical text and turned into something else. On the other hand, the philosopher relies on the intuitive judgments of his (her) own rhetorical style, which the translator‘s must be uncritical to believe in his work. The translator must transact with two different directions in philosophy: firstly, the logical analysis which is rational and proved by hypothesis and experiment; secondly, the speculative analysis of the per-sonal ideas and preferences. The translator has the same directions of mind and heart, but must try to act as the ―unconscious‖ agent relating directly to the lexis and lyric of the philosopher―with no expression of his own emotions and cultural nuances. The ―double message‖ of the translator is acknowledged and used by contemporary philosophers and

―philosophers‖ in the sense of psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, deconstruc-tion, post-structuralists, semioticians, and other interpreters.

In Wittgenstein‘s era, Walter Benjamin wrote on the translator‘s method of ―Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers‖ (written in 1923, only published in 1955; translated as ―The Task of the Translator‖ [1968]). The cultural historian Benjamin strove to balance the ―mechanical ―reproducibility‖

(Benjamin 1968a) of writing, called by him the ―afterlife‖ for future gen-erations. The ―afterlife‖ reversed the method of literary and philosophi-cal translation after life into the instrument of reasoning. Translation is no longer based on the sacred ritual of artistic production, but focuses on the social capitalism of political economics transformed into world culture to depict the critical horrors of modern warfare (Gorlée 1994, pp.

133-145).