What is called thinking, what calls for thought: translation and transposition

Abstract The invitation to continue a discussion of this intriguing and disruptive book is irresistible, for its potential in exploring a multiplicity of vocalisations as responses to the challenge of the imposing and many layered writings of Martin Heidegger. The great and enduring appeal of those writings is their disruption and displacement of two commonly reaffirmed distinctions: that between emotion and reason, or affect and concept; and that between poetics and aesthetics, with more than a suggestion of connections between the two disruptions and displacements. The former distinctions are reconfigured through the relations sketched in Being and Time between Befindlichkeit , perhaps better translated as dispositionality, and Stimmung , and Verstimmung , attunement and disharmony, which alas remain obscure for Anglophone readers by the decision in the otherwise excellent and indispensable translation by Macquarrie and Robinson to translate Stimmung as ‘mood’, Verstimmung as ‘bad mood’, and Befindlichkeit as ‘state of mind’. For Eng, the resonances between Bestimmung , Stimmung and Verstimmung ring out clearly. Four key themes are taken up here: multiple vocalisations, scene setting, variant lines of descent and a questioning of mothers.