ABSTRACT
How does Rosenzweig formulate his resistance to Hegel? Can we follow Rosenzweig in translating Hegel’s sovereign war into peace? The word translation designates and promises balance and peace. Yet, this word is rather imprecise, for at least two quite trivial, paradoxical reasons: first, there is something untranslatable that nevertheless leaves a certain trace in the translation. And second, what is to be translated is already a translation of something else (either prior to or yet to come). If, for example, war is translated or transformed into peace, then peace, aside from resting on war, also contains war and carries along its authentic and intact (untranslatable) traces. 1 Also, perhaps war is already a translation of something much more terrible or even something gentler than peace. Yet, what is truly peaceful in the word translation concerns a continuous promise that the translation of war into peace, that is, that the future status of peace, be eventually possible and achievable. A translation is an ever unfinished project that provokes and calls forth peace. Translation as such, then, already calms and brings together what seemed entirely foreign and unacceptable.
