The question of the contract is a secondary question that has come in the awareness of the fact that there are things to take account of – that these things as such are given to begin with. That the question is impossible to answer once for all may be acknowledged in considering the fact that the conception of the contract as the ground of that which is will necessarily exclude that it be given as a thing to take account of. Rather it is thought of as already left behind by the awareness of the presence of the debt that it has grounded – which includes this very thought about the contract.

1. The translation of the contract from one language to the next is an internal disposition of the contract to extend itself to any other region. There is not a single language that exclusively precedes its operation, but a limitless potential to express itself in language, and the languages in which it is expressed are untranslatable between them. Thus from world to world the words that would refer to the phenomena that presuppose the terms are not equatable constructions, and so cannot be transferred from any one to any other, unless it be by losing their significance – but the contract will allow for the expression of its terms in any language. It follows that there is no one authoritative translation to depend on.

Continue reading “Notes on the Translation of the Contract, by Christopher Clifton” →