“Translating Heidegger translating Wesen” outlines the challenge to interpreters of Martin Heidegger’s other-than-metaphysical thinking of being [Seinsdenken], of contending with and seeking to unravel a being-historic mystery at the inception of occidental thinking that is notoriously difficult to impart, or re-impart, as essentially worth(while)-thinking. For, when called upon to translate into English (or another language) what is wesentlich thought by Heidegger in the German (phrase-)word “das Wesen”, we must first learn to think through the paradox of his translating of this verbal nouning into its ownmost word in his own German language and thinking before we can properly translate the very same into ours.
Part One reappraises the way in which the incipient essenzing of be-ing, i.e. being, as being(ness) [die anfängliche Wesung des Seiend, d.h. des Seins, als Seiend(heit)] lays itself out for the interpretation ‘im Wesen’, d.h. ‘in der Wesung’, der Wesen(heit), notably in the enigmatic configuration: ‘Wesen(heit) = essentia, οὐσία and Wesen(heit) ≠ essentia, οὐσία but rather: = esse, εἶναι’. And it delves the extent to which, should we pay heed thereto, the cognates of Latin (esse)ntia––including Greek οὐσία (εἶναι)––are tantamount to the inmost possibilities and imperatives of suitable translation inherent to the wording of the keywords in question themselves and their peculiar way of being able or unable to transpose and transport their own as well as their ownmost essenz(ing) [Wesen], respectively essenzing [Wesung], into our occidental language and thinking of being. So much so that, in the words of one of Shakespeare’s protagonists in Merry Wives of Windsor (1623) v. v. 229: “What cannot be eschew’d, must be embrac’d.”