ABSTRACT
This chapter follows some consequential turns in the translation history of philosophy between German, French, and English, the national language triad at the center of mid-twentieth-century Comparative Literature. After examining the hegemony that French theory achieved in the Anglo-American humanities by the end of the twentieth century, it revisits French theory's reception of German philosophy. The focus then turns to French Heideggerian Jean Beaufret (1907–1982), whose French translations of Heidegger (and enthusiastic writings about Heidegger) inspired the poststructuralist “Generation of 1933” not only to read Heidegger in French, but also to learn German. Most importantly, Beaufret's aporetic approach to translating Heidegger's terminology performed the untranslatability of Heidegger's German—a translation strategy that even influenced American translators of Heidegger. The closing sections examine a 2001–4 lecture series by Alain Badiou, in which Badiou challenges the apolitical messianism of Heidegger's concept of “the clearing” (die Lichtung) while relying on Beaufret's 1960s translation of Heidegger. Beaufret's differential translation of Lichtung (both as clarière and as l’ouvert) becomes so crucial to Badiou's reading of Heidegger that Martin Born explicitly retains the distinction in his 2014 translation of Badiou's French lecture into German.
