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For both Levinas and Derrida, the practice of philosophy, understood as commentary by the former and deconstruction by the latter, was founded on borrowing terms from other languages and finding their equivalents in French. This argument is developed through a discussion of two texts, Levinas's early Talmudic reading, "The Temptation of Temptation," and Derrida's deconstruction of The Merchant of Venice in "What Is a 'Relevant' Translation?" This essay shows how translated terms are interwoven into these texts. It also shows that translation is essential to Levinas's and Derrida's creative conceptualization, and to the performativity of their philosophies, meaning that Levinas and Derrida open their language to other languages in order to create concepts. It finally argues that in both Derrida and Levinas the question of the limits of translation, namely, of the moment in which translation becomes conversion, is left open.
Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida often translate into French-or use existing French translations of-philosophical, religious, and literary works and concepts originally written in other languages (Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, German, English, Russian . . .). Are these translations important as translations? That is, are translations necessary in a merely contingent or technical respect, as a way to speak about non-French texts to French readers? Or are they necessary in some intrinsic way? My argument is that for both Levinas and Derrida, the very practice of philosophy was founded on borrowing terms from other languages and finding their equivalents in French. That is, for both Levinas and Derrida, literary translation was essential to philosophy, understood as commentary by the former and deconstruction by the latter.1 Neither could practice philosophy without translation, regardless of what language they chose to write in, and what languages their readers happened to know.
Although Levinas's and Derrida's philosophies differ in style and purpose, the debt the latter owes to the former is vast and has often been explored,2 all the more so as Derrida acknowledged it in innumerable books and essays.3 I will focus on a limited aspect of the connection between them, which is illustrated in a short remark of Levinas in his Talmudic reading, "Cities of Refuge." Levinas writes there that the midrash's way of reading "resembles the processes of 'dissemination' in use today in certain avant-garde...