Foucault as Translator of Binswanger and von Weizsäcker

Translating Binswanger

Verdeaux had worked with Jacques Lacan and was working and studying at the Hôpital Sainte-Anne in Paris. This work and her previous translation experience meant that the psychoanalytic and clinical vocabulary of Binswanger did not pose many problems for her, though there were greater challenges when it came to the philosophical language, especially regarding Heidegger and phenomenology. While Kuhn had referenced Heidegger in Maskendeutungen im Rorschachschen Versuch concerning angst, innerworldly-being and being and appearance (Kuhn, 1992: 68, 215), Binswanger’s text was of a different order of magnitude. As Verdeaux was less familiar with that technical language, she turned to Foucault for help. Verdeaux had known Foucault since his childhood, as her parents had been friends of Foucault’s. She had spent the war with her brother in the safety of Poitiers, and during that time she became the assistant anaesthetist to Foucault’s father, Dr Paul Foucault (Eribon, 2011: 79; Macey, 1993: 6–7).

Foucault had been a serious reader of Heidegger since his student years, and this was an ideal opportunity for him. It combined his professional interest in psychology, which he was teaching at the time in both Paris and Lille, with his background in philosophy. He knew the specialised vocabulary and had ideas of how to render it in French. Indeed, relatively little of Heidegger’s work was translated at the time, and Foucault and Verdeaux were partly shaping the vocabulary themselves, rather than simply rendering it consistent to existing works in French. The resulting translation was attributed to Verdeaux alone. Verdeaux’s reports of their working practices to Eribon and Macey suggest that the translation was rather more collaborative. They met in the late afternoon or evening at the Ecole Normale Supérieure after Verdeaux had finished work at Sainte-Anne, and they discussed the best way to render the terms into French (Eribon, 2011: 81; Macey, 1993: 60). Work on the translation began at the end of 1953, and was completed in February 1954, when a copy was sent to Binswanger. ⁵

While Foucault does not get a translator credit, he was credited for the notes. In fact, some of these notes are Binswanger’s own, though the distinction is not marked. Some of the additional notes are simply to provide a reference: Foucault spells out that Maler Nolten (Binswanger, 1992: 101; 1954: 140; 1993: 84) is a reference to Eduard Mörike’s novel Nolten, the Painter (in Binswanger, 1954: 140 n. 1); or that an unreferenced quotation (1992: 103; 1954: 143–4; 1993: 85–6) is from Goethe’s Faust (1954: 144 n. 1). There are other unreferenced quotations which Foucault does not provide. Another note is an editorial reference that a phrase appears in French in Binswanger’s German text (1992: 97; 1954: 134; 1993: 82; 1954: 134 n. 1); Foucault also adds a reference to a Binswanger’s Wandlungen in der Auffassung und Deutung des Traumes [Transformations in the Perception and Interpretation of the Dream] which is only mentioned obliquely (1992: 105; 1954: 146; 1993: 86; 1954: 146 n. 1; Binswanger, 1928). Two notes are, however, much more interesting than these mechanical ones, because they give an indication of translation choices. These notes have not been republished in this form, and since the original translation is hard to find, I include the French text below before a translation.

Dasein as Présence

The first note, on the opening page of Binswanger’s text, reads:

Avec l’accord de l’auteur, nous avons traduit Dasein par «présence». Bien entendu, cette traduction ne cherche pas à mettre en valeur les coordonnées spatio-temporelles qui situeraient l’existence dans le hic et nunc d’une objectivité; mais elle nous a semblé plus valable que l’habituelle «existence» pour restituer dans sa structure significative le mot allemande Dasein («être là»). Ce qu’exprime la «présence», n’est-ce pas à la fois la facticité d’une existence en situation (présence ici), et, en même temps, son ouverture sur un monde (présence au monde)?

With the author’s agreement we have translated Dasein as ‘présence [presence]’. Of course, this translation does not mean to foreground existence within the spatio-temporal coordinates of the hic and nunc of objectivity, but it seems more useful to us than the usual ‘existence’ in order to give the significative structure of the German word Dasein (‘être là’ [being there’]). Is it not the case that ‘presence’ expresses both the facticity of existence in a situation – presence here – and at the same time – its opening to a world (presence to the world)? (1954: 131 n. 1)

Macey has commented that, ‘in terms of translation practice, the most interesting feature of the text is the joint decision, reached after lengthy discussion, to render Dasein as “presence in the world”’ (Macey, 1993: 59). While it is ‘presence’, not ‘presence in the world’, the point is well made. Dasein is a standard German word which means existence and can be found in philosophical texts before Heidegger. But in his 1927 book Sein und Zeit [Being and Time], Heidegger uses it in a stressed way to examine the particular structures and characteristics of human existence, their experience of being. Heidegger also uses the word Existenz, of Latinate rather than Germanic roots, and translations try to find some way of marking the distinction. For example, Heidegger says that ‘the “essence” of Dasein lies in its existence [Existenz]’ (1927: 42; 1962: 67). ⁶

Heidegger importantly highlights the word’s linguistic sense of Da-sein, literally there-being or being-the-there. While Heidegger stressed that the ‘there’ should not be understood in a simple, spatial, sense of location, some early French translations or adaptions, notably Jean-Paul Sartre’s L’être et le néant [Being and Nothingness], used the term être-là, and some English translations followed suit with ‘being-there’. Early French translations, such as Henry Corbin’s 1938 translation of What is Metaphysics? as Qu’est-ce que la métaphysique? had used the term la réalité humaine (i.e. 22; see Bligh, 2011). Simply keeping the German word Dasein has become standard practice in modern English and French translations, indicating the distinctive philosophical weight Heidegger gives it. Binswanger adopts the distinction between Existenz and Dasein from Heidegger, and so Foucault and Verdeaux had to face this challenge. They translate Existenz as existence (i.e. 1992: 96; 1954: 133; 1993: 81) and Dasein sometimes in the same way (1992: 95, 96; 1954: 132, 133; 1993: 81, 82). But generally, they do translate Dasein as présence. Examples include ‘Unseres Dasein’ as ‘notre présence, i.e. our Dasein (1992: 99; 1954: 138; 1993: 83), and ‘dieses Wir, das Subjekt des Daseins’ as ‘ce nous, sujet de la présence’, ‘this we, the subject of Dasein’ (1992: 100; 1954: 139; 1993: 84).

In his 1950 Paris lecture, Binswanger had noted that he rejected the use of the French term ‘existence’ and that he would use the German Dasein instead. Although the symposium was on ‘Analyse existentielle’ he says it should be on ‘Daseins-analyse’. Dasein, he notes, is an ‘almost untranslatable’ word, and even suggests ‘Analyse anthropologique phénoménologique’ as a possibility (1951: 108). He underlines that ‘phenomenology is the only method appropriate to anthropology’ (1951: 110). By anthropology he means the same kind of thing Foucault did in a Lille and ENS course of the same period, namely a science of the human in the broadest sense, the issue of being human. ⁷ One of the reasons Binswanger resists ‘existence’ is that it evokes the idea of ‘existentialism’ and, to his mind, ‘Heidegger is an ontologist philosopher and not an existential philosopher in the manner of Sartre’ (1951: 108–9). The second reason is that ‘“Dasein” includes the soul and the body, the conscious and the unconscious, the voluntary and the involuntary, thought and action, emotivity, affectivity and instinct and that an idea which includes all of this can only be that of Being itself, to the exclusion of any qualification’ (1951: 109). It might therefore be questioned why, a few years later, Verdeaux and Foucault, with Binswanger’s support, chose to render Dasein as présence.

As Henri Maldiney underlines, this term is fundamental to understanding the approach which Binswanger develops: ‘Daseinsanalysis is first an analysis of the structural and temporal structures of présence’ (1973: 92). However, it is worth stressing that Verdeaux and Foucault do not use the term présence simply as a translation of Binswanger’s use of Dasein, but also for Heidegger’s use. This is found when Binswanger quotes Heidegger, and the translators adopt this term there. One example is helpful in giving a context to Binswanger’s use for his focus on the relation between dream and existence:

Hier ist, um mit Heidegger zu reden, das Dasein vor sein Sein gebracht; es ist gebracht, insofern als ihm etwas geschieht, und als er nicht weiss, wie und was ihm geschieht. Das ist der ontologische Grundzug all Träumens und seiner Verwandtschaft mit der Angst! [4] Träumen heisst: Ich weiss nicht, wie mir geschieht.

Nous dirons ici, pour parler avec Heidegger, que la «présence est amenée devant son être». Elle y est amenée dans la mesure où quelque chose lui arrive et où elle ne sait pas comment cela lui est arrivé ni même ce qui lui est arrivé. Ceci est le trait ontologique fondamental de tout rêve et de sa parenté avec l’angoisse [1]. Rêver signifie: «Je ne sais pas ce qui m’arrive».

To use Heidegger’s words here, ‘Dasein is brought before its own being’ – insofar, that is, as something happens to it and Dasein knows neither the ‘how’ nor the ‘what’ of the happening. This is the basic ontological element of all dreaming and its relatedness to anxiety or angst [12]. To dream means: I don’t know what is happening to me. (1992: 134; 1954: 190–1; 1993: 102)

Stimmung

The second note by Foucault to the French text is also revealing and relates to the term bestimmte cited above. Binswanger makes a note of the distinction found ‘Im Bild und in der stimmungsmässigen Reaktion auf dasselbe’ – ‘in the image and in the affective response to the image’, which Verdeaux and Foucault render as ‘l’image et dans la réaction thymique’. They add a note at this point:

Binswanger emploie le mot Stimmung pour désigner aussi bien la coloration affective d’une expérience vécue que le caractère réceptif de l’existence humaine considérée au niveau de l’existentiel ontologique (cf plus haut, le mot réceptivité). En effet, aucun mot français ne nous a paru correspondre, à lui seul, à une acception aussi large, nous l’avons traduit par ‘humeur’ chaque fois que le mot Stimmung était analysé surtout au niveau de l’expérience psychologique.

Binswanger employs the word Stimmung to designate as much the affective coloration of a lived experience as the receptive characteristic of human existence – considered at the level of an ontological existential (see, above, the word réceptivité). However, no single French word seems to correspond to this broad meaning, so we have translated Stimmung as ‘humour’ each time the word Stimmung is analysed at the level of psychological experience. (1954: 151 n. 1)

The reference to réceptivité is important. It comes when Binswanger’s ‘Geworfensein der Stimmung’ is translated as ‘l’abandon à la réceptivité’. While the French would be literally rendered as ‘the abandonment (or surrender) to receptivity’, a more Heideggerian reading of the German would be something like ‘the being-thrown of mood’ (1992: 98; 1954: 135; 1993: 82). It is clear that the note in the text shows a deep understanding of the notion of Stimmung, even if we might quibble with the choice of humeur as its principal translation. ‘Mood’ or ‘attunement’ are more common English renderings, and there is arguably a lineage to more recent discussions of ‘affect’.

Yet Stimmung does not just appear as a substantive, but also as an element within other words. The term ‘bestimmte’ and ‘stimmungsmässigen’ were discussed above, and there are other examples. Two come in this contrast between ‘Gestimmtsein’ and ‘den längeren und tieferen Wellen der normalen und pathologischen exaltierten und depressiven «Verstimmung»’. Verdeaux and Foucault render this as ‘l’humeur suscitée… aux ondes plus longues et plus profondes de «l’altération de l’humeur» exaltée et depressive, chez les êtres normaux et pathologiques’. The contrast is between Gestimmtsein, being-attuned, and ‘the larger and deeper rhythms of normal and pathologically manic and depressive disattunement [Verstimmung]’, which Verdeaux and Foucault put in a way which would be literally re-translated as ‘humour aroused’ and ‘alteration of humour’ (1992: 108; 1954: 152; 1993: 88). Elsewhere, they translate Stimmungsgehalt as contenu thymique (1992: 111; 1954: 157; 1993: 90).

Other Choices

Some other translation choices are also worth noting. For the German Erlebnis they use, not the simple ‘experience’, but ‘l’expérience vécue’, ‘lived experience’, to stress the German word for life, Leben (1992: 95; 1954: 132; 1993: 81). They chose to translate the German Trieb as instinct, instinct, rather than as pulsion, drive (1992: 132; 1954: 188; 1993: 101). Given Freud marks a distinction between the German Instinkt and Trieb, the choice is potentially confusing. This has been a theme much discussed in terms of how Freud should be translated into English.

One of the key aspects of Heidegger’s work is that Dasein is always already embedded in a world – not first a subject which then encounters a world, but his hyphenated term of In-der-Welt-Sein, being-in-the-world. He also uses the term Welt, world, in compounds such as Umwelt, Mitwelt – literally the surrounding world and the with-world, often translated as environment and shared-world – and Eigenwelt, the own-world of self-reflection. The notion of Umwelt is much used in environmental psychology, especially in work following the biologist Jakob von Uexküll, and in French is often translated as milieu. Yet when Binswanger uses the phrase ‘Um- und Mitwelt’, Verdeaux and Foucault chose to render this as ‘le monde extérieur et le monde d’autrui’, literally ‘the exterior world and the world of the other’ (1992: 96; 1954: 133; 1993: 81). This is arguably a misunderstanding of both terms: the world is not exterior to Dasein, but surrounding, enveloping, of which Dasein is an essential part. Similarly, Mitwelt is not the world of others, but the world of our encounter with others, shared or together. Binswanger also stresses the importance of Mitsein, being-with or co-existence. Heidegger begins to develop themes around this question in Being and Time, even if his main focus is on Dasein and its engagements in the world and with other beings as a means of access to the question of being itself. As Maldiney puts it, the notion of with-man [Mit-Mensch] is crucial to Binswanger, whose work is more concerned with the inter-personal: ‘the man of the with; the man who exists to encounter [l’homme de l’avec, l’homme qui existe à rencontrer]. Dasein is Mitsein’ (1973: 209).

There is one significant difference between the original 1930 version of Binswanger’s essay in Neue Schweizer Rundschau and the 1947 reprint in Ausgewählte Vorträge und Aufsätze. Although Binswanger notes the omission in his preface to the 1947 version, the paragraph does not appear in the French translation (1947–55, Vol. I: 11). ⁸ While its content is not especially important, a reader should have been alerted to its absence. Equally, in one passage, there is some of the quoted Greek missing from the French translation (1992: 126; 1954: 178–9; 1993: 98). Verdeaux and Foucault’s translation is thus not a critical edition of the text, and, at times, even a little careless. Nor are these issues addressed in the reprint of the text in 1971. But it cannot be stressed enough the challenge they faced, with relatively little of Heidegger’s work translated into French at the time. Verdeaux and Foucault were forging a path not just in the translation of Binswanger, but also in his use of Heideggerian terms.

Introducing Binswanger

Having completed the translation, Verdeaux recalls saying to Foucault: ‘If you like the book, do a preface for it’ (quoted in Eribon, 2011: 81). Verdeaux continues that while she was in Provence on holiday over Easter 1954, she received a large envelope. It contained a long sprawling text, just over twice as long as the essay it introduced. Foucault’s note simply read: ‘Here is your Easter egg’ (cited in Eribon, 2011: 81–2). This story should be taken with some scepticism, as there was discussion of an introduction earlier that year. But its length seems to have surprised everyone. Verdeaux was enthusiastic about the text, and so Foucault sent it to Binswanger on 27 April 1954. In a letter to Binswanger accompanying the text, Foucault says that he has two purposes: ‘to show the importance of the dream for existential analysis [analyse existentielle]’ and ‘to show how your conception of the dream implies a complete renewal of analyses of imagination’. ⁹

Binswanger’s reply to Foucault of 6 May 1954 shows that he not only read the Introduction with interest, but shared it with Kuhn and Wilhelm Szilasi, a former colleague of Husserl and Heidegger, now living in Switzerland. ¹⁰ A few days later, on 10 May 1954, he wrote again, saying that Foucault had done ‘an excellent job’, which was a ‘great scientific honour’ to him, especially praising his work on the ‘movement of the imagination’, and extending his work on the dream, as he had done to Freud. ¹¹ The letter goes on to note a number of qualifications to Foucault’s Introduction, which Foucault says he will address in its revision. ¹² It is not clear how many actually were addressed, since the published text contains the issues Binswanger raised.

Foucault’s friend Maurice Pinguet recalled that Foucault found it amusing to have written an essay over twice as long as the text it introduced (Pinguet, 2009: 52). There was some difficulty persuading the publisher to accept a long text by an unknown thinker introducing a translation by someone who was scarcely known in France. Le rêve et l’existence did not receive much attention when it was published. While a few hundred copies were sold quite quickly, a couple of years later the ‘remaining copies were pulped’ (Macey, 1993: 60–1). There were only two critical discussions in the 1950s. One was in an essay by Henri Ey in L’Evolution Psychiatrique in 1956, which mentions Foucault’s ‘magnificent and substantial introduction’ (p. 109 n. 1). A review by Robert Misrahi in Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale appeared in 1959. Misrahi describes the importance of the Introduction, outlining in some detail its conceptual moves and the use Foucault makes of Binswanger’s text. It is critical of Foucault’s neglect of Sartre, though Misrahi does agree with Foucault – who is himself following Heidegger and Binswanger’s approach – that philosophy must begin by being an anthropology before becoming an ontology, and finally ‘an ethics of history and historicity’ (Misrahi, 1959: 105–6). Yet what is perhaps most interesting about this review is that it is much more about Foucault than Binswanger, and as well as being the most significant discussion of the Introduction, is the first sustained engagement with Foucault’s work at all.

Foucault’s text is more than just an introduction, as Binswanger himself noted. It also promises a future work continuing its themes, which was never published (1994: 65; 1993: 31). Yet a fuller manuscript on Binswanger was written around this time and is discussed by Elisabetta Basso elsewhere in this issue. This seems to be the text which Foucault indicated. The manuscript, like the Introduction, develops themes from some of Foucault’s teaching in this period. ¹³ Rather than needing to be persuaded by Verdeaux to write an introduction to a text for which he had discovered a real enthusiasm, it seems that Foucault had a wealth of material on Binswanger already prepared in relation to his teaching, and that this project gave him a suitable outlet. Basso has also suggested that reading this introduction in the light of the Lille lecture courses allows us to see that this concern was not merely a ‘misstep’ in Foucault’s career, but that it links to the work that went into History of Madness (2016: 40–41; see Basso, this issue). Yet the path there is not straight-forward, and Foucault’s inquiries went down many detours (see Elden, forthcoming). Of course, since Foucault’s profile rose, the limited attention to this text has changed somewhat, though it remains a neglected part of his work (see Revel, 1992; Monod, 1997; Sabot, 2006; Smyth, 2011).

Verdeaux continued work on Binswanger after this initial essay, acting as translator of one of his case studies on schizophrenia, the Le cas Suzanne Urban (Binswanger, 1957b). Though it is credited to Verdeaux alone, Basso has suggested that Foucault and Kuhn should share the translator credits for this work too (2007: 319), while Binswanger’s preface to the translation simply thanks them as his ‘friends’ for their ‘precious advice’ (Binswanger, 1957b: 11). Verdeaux also translated Jakob Wyrsch’s Die Person des Schizophrenen (1956 [1949]). Foucault’s links to Binswanger ended after he moved to Uppsala in 1955: the only letter from Foucault after 1954 was a note thanking Binswanger for sending him a copy of his Erinnerungen an Sigmund Freud in 1956. ¹⁴ In 1971 Verdeaux was the lead translator of a collection of Binswanger’s work that appeared in the Arguments series edited by Kostas Axelos with Les Éditions de Minuit. This text has a preface by Roland Kuhn and Henri Maldiney, and a glossary by Verdeaux and Kuhn. The 1954 translation of ‘Dream and Existence’ is reprinted in this collection (1971: 199–215); a more recent translation was made by Françoise Dastur in 2012. Foucault’s role goes unmentioned in the 1971 reprint: even his notes are now incorporated as either translator notes or into the glossary. Verdeaux’s later translation projects seem to be disconnected from the psychological works – they include writings on theatre, ethnography and libretti.

Translation

The translation was published on 3 February 1958 but was completed sometime before this. Foucault first mentions the translation as complete in 1953, when he was asked by the Université de Lille for a list of his publications, and the text was submitted to the press in late 1954. Defert’s indication that Foucault was still working on it while in Uppsala in March 1956 (1994: 21) must refer to a stage in the book’s production process. The German text was first published in 1940; the translation is of the 1948 fourth edition. While the second and third editions have brief prefaces, the text was substantially the same, with just some additions to the notes (1973: 4–5, 5; 1958: 34, 34–5). The fourth edition had a much more substantial preface (1973: 6–22; 1958: 19–31). Von Weizsäcker stresses that the preface is not an attempt to rewrite the work, but to indicate some marginal thoughts concerning themes he has returned to and others which have arisen since its first publication (1973: 7; 1958: 20). The translation again appeared with Desclée de Brouwer, in the series on ‘Bibliothèque Neuro-Psychiatrique de langue française’, which had also included Phénoménologie du masque and Le cas Suzanne Urban, as well as works by Ey (1950–4), and an early co-authored study by Lacan (Bonnafé et al., 1950).

The translation is interesting in multiple ways. It begins with the title – Der Gestaltkreis. Foucault and Rocher render this as Le Cycle de la structure. Structure is rather a restrictive translation of Gestalt, which is often untranslated. Gestalt literally means shape or form, but it has a specific sense in psychology, where it is used to describe the way that the mind forms a coherent whole which is not simply the combination of individual perceptions or reactions. Indeed, Kurt Koffka, one of the founders of Gestalt psychology, made the claim that ‘the whole is other than the sum of the parts’, suggesting this was a more accurate claim than it being ‘greater than the sum’ (1999: 176). For Koffka the point was difference, not excess. While the projects should not be conflated, there is a resonance. As Ey stresses, for von Weizsäcker it is not ‘a simple structure in a circle [structure en cercle] (Kreisgestalt), but a “Gestaltkreis”, that is a cycle of structure [cycle de la structure]’ (1958: 11). While ‘structure’ as a choice is not in itself inaccurate, it certainly fails to capture the specific sense of the German term. Indeed, in the preface to the fourth edition von Weizsäcker notes that the term had an aspect and advantage he was not aware of initially: it does not imply a precise ‘cyclic structure [Kreisgestalt]’, but something which is not yet achieved. ‘This is the internal conflict between the perceptible image (suggested by the words “structure” and “cycle”), and the concept without figure which produces the composition of these two words’ (1973: 6; 1958: 19).

The subtitle Theorie der Einheit von Wahrnehmen und Bewegen [Theory of the Unity of Perception and Movement] is also significant – the book indeed offers a theory to unify the psychological and the physiological. While this is therefore a work engaging with both disciplines, the literature which von Weizsäcker utilises is much wider. The work included in this book is, he says, not something which can be labelled ‘biology, psychophysics or philosophy of nature’, but a development of themes in each of these domains in relation to ‘experimental research, as well as an attempt to base new pathological and medical research on new foundations’ (1973: 17; 1958: 27). In his terms, Gestaltkreis connects to biology, medicine and philosophy (1973: 22; 1958: 30).

Von Weizsäcker’s resources include biologists such as Hans Driesch and von Uexküll. In addition, he draws on concepts from philosophy, like ‘form, movement, object [Gegenstand], etc.’, and some from ‘philosophy of nature, such as space, time, function’ (1973: 21; 1958: 30). Husserl and Heidegger are also important to his project, which helps to explain Foucault’s role in the translation and, presumably, his interest in the text. Ey thinks it is remarkable that the only French authors mentioned by von Weizsäcker are Henri Bergson and Sartre, and he suggests that Merleau-Ponty may have been an inspiration (1958: 7, 10). Yet as the 1946 preface to the third edition notes, some of the key works – Sartre’s 1943 Being and Nothingness crucially – were published after the first edition had appeared in 1939 (1973: 5; 1958: 34–5). Merleau-Ponty’s The Structure of Behaviour first appeared in 1942, and Phenomenology of Perception not until 1945. Add to this the complications of printing and intellectual exchange during the war, and it makes more sense to imagine a partly-shared intellectual project and references than straight-forward influence. Yet this does not mean the approaches are the same. In the third edition von Weizsäcker suggests that Sartre’s book fills out what was only an ‘anticipation’ in his own work, but adds rather cuttingly that this is ‘with the brilliant and decisive energy available to the philosopher who is better protected from the inextricable entanglement of empirical relations’ (1973: 5; 1958: 34–5).

One of the most important aspects of von Weizsäcker’s work is that he broadens the psychological sense of Gestalt to encompass physiological issues, notably movement. He sees perception and movement as being flexible responses, not fixed, and reworked and tuned through experience. His focus on movement includes the nervous system and motor functions. Hence the book’s first theme is ‘movement of living beings [lebender Wesen/êtres vivants] but not just any bodily or purely imaginary movement in the spatio-temporal system’ (1973: 23; 1958: 37). The focus is rather on self-movement, ‘spontaneity or auto-mobility [Spontaneität, die Selbstbewegung/spontanéité, «auto-mobilité»]’ (1973: 23; 1958: 37). He notes that ‘this implies that we admit the existence of a subject, of an active being for themselves and for their own ends’ (1973: 23; 1958: 37). He argues that ‘to study the living being, we must take part in life’. He is interested in life in its broadest sense, from birth to death (1973: 3; 1958: 33). For him, ‘Biologie ist Formenkunde’; ‘biology is science of forms’ (1973: 198; 1958: 170).

His focus requires him to discuss space and time in some detail, as a way of making sense of the encounter of the living being with their environment. Indeed, in the book’s only diagram, von Weizsäcker puts the two in direct relation – Organismus [O] and Umwelt [U] (1973: 200; 1958: 171). This circle is, von Weizsäcker stresses, closed, a cycle which does not have an exterior or entry/exit point. He says that ‘we call the genesis of the forms of the movement of organisms the Gestaltkreis’ (1973: 200; 1958: 171). As so many other theorists of this relation, von Weizsäcker draws upon von Uexküll’s work on the Umwelt. In distinction to the translation of ‘Dream and Existence’, Foucault and Rocher translate Umwelt sometimes as milieu ou monde environnant – milieu or environing world (1973: 237; 1958: 197; see 1973: 31, 32; 1958: 43, 44, etc.), though when Umwelt is contrasted with Eigenwelt, own or self-world, they translate it as ‘l’univers environnant et l’univers propre’ (1973: 24; 1958: 38). All of these choices give a sense of the complexity of the German term, missed with a simple translation of environnement or environment.

In understanding this spatial sense of a milieu, a key theme of the book is ‘orientation in space’ (1973: 12; 1958: 23), and von Weizsäcker stresses that we ‘must distinguish between physical-mathematical and biological integration of space’ (1973: 36; 1958: 47). As he expands:

Physical-mathematical integration has a system of references constant in time. Its coordinates must be in a state of total immobility, and all bodies which refer to it are thus without contradiction between themselves. Biological integration only has a momentary value [Augenblicksgeltung/valeur momentanée]; its ‘system of references [Bezugssystem/système de références]’ can certainly have a certain duration, but also in each moment it can be sacrificed in favour of another. It is not therefore a system strictly speaking, but an arrangement [Einordnung/agencement] of biological operation in the present. (1973: 36; 1958: 47)

Yet it is worth underlining that space is not a theme for him just in relation to physiology, but also in terms of psychology, with a stress on the importance of spatial aspects of perception as much as temporal ones (1973: 159–60; 1958: 142–3). He argues that space and time take their order from a situation [Situation/situation] and event or appropriation [Ereignis/événement]. So, rather than an event or situation being located in space and time, they give rise to its definition and form. ‘Things are not in space and time, but space and time arise in the development of the happening [Geschehens-Fortbildung/la continuité des événements] and are thus founded in, or on, things. The world and things in it are not in space and time, but space and time are in the world, in its things’ (1973: 175–6; 1958: 154).

Indeed, in the note he provides here, von Weizsäcker quotes Heidegger on space, a passage from Being and Time which is interesting for Foucault and Rocher’s translation of Dasein as, again, présence:

Der Raum ist weder im Subjekt, noch ist die Welt im Raum. Der Raum ist vielmehr ‘in’ der Welt; sofern das für das Dasein konstitutive In-der-Welt-Sein Raum erschlossen hat.

L’espace n’est pas dans le sujet et le monde n’est pas dans l’espace. L’espace est bien plutôt dans le monde; dans la mesure où l’être dans le monde, constitutif de la présence, a ouvert l’espace. (1973: 287 n. 15; 1958: 154 n. 1).

There are only two brief translator notes from Foucault and Rocher, both of which say the same thing, that the French percevoir, to perceive, translates the German Wahr-nehmen, ‘literally take for true [vrai]’ (1958: 44 n. 1, 122 n. 1). Accordingly, they translate the crucial Wahrnehmung as perception – one of the two key terms of the work along with Bewegung, mouvement. Von Weizsäcker also uses the compounds Selbstbewegung [automouvement – self-movement] and Selbstwahrnehmung [autoperception – self-perception]. Part of the reason for the lack of translator notes or a preface is that the text has a detailed glossary, provided by von Weizsäcker with an explanation of key terms. The translation of this provides the German term, before a French equivalent, and then von Weizsäcker’s gloss (1973: 291–4; 1958: 227–30). A separate set of notes on translation choices is thus largely unnecessary. One choice is also notable for showing that Foucault had, perhaps, not fully assimilated Heidegger’s work. Abbau is rendered as disparition (which is also used to translate Ausfall, failure), rather than the literal unbuilding or dismantling: Abbau and Destruktion being the two terms Heidegger uses for his challenge to the philosophical tradition, which Jacques Derrida would of course capture in the term deconstruction. Indeed, part of Derrida’s critique is of what he calls the ‘metaphysics of presence’.

Political Controversy

Von Weizsäcker is a controversial figure, though it is unclear how much of this Foucault could have been aware of in the mid-1950s. There is certainly no record Foucault met von Weizsäcker, who died a year before the French translation appeared. Von Weizsäcker can be judged both for his thought and his actions. In 1933, shortly after the Nazi party had gained power, he gave a lecture at the University of Freiburg on the invitation of Heidegger (Böhme, 2007: 18). This was shortly after Heidegger had been appointed as rector of the university, a political appointment which led to his joining the Nazi party. The lecture was part of a programme of political education for students, held at the Paulus concert hall in the town, since the university did not have a room of sufficient size.

It has been suggested that because von Weizsäcker was not a Nazi, the invitation shows that Heidegger was still taking a distance from the regime (Young, 1997: 20). Indeed, Heidegger interrupted a student speech on the National Socialist revolution before the lecture with the instruction: ‘This jabber [Geschwätz – nonsense] will stop immediately!’ (Picht, 1977: 198–9; 1990: 162–3). Heidegger’s political involvement with the Nazi regime has been widely discussed, and that is not the point here. Rather, it concerns von Weizsäcker and the politics of his work. The Freiburg lecture was published in 1934 in the Nazi journal Volk im Werden (reprinted in 1986: 143–57) and, in it, Von Weizsäcker advocated euthanasia and the political control of medicine. This was because he argued that illness could be a social problem, not caused by the social, but a problem for the social and therefore of importance beyond the individually sick body. Given that the nation was an organism, the pathogenic elements may need to be removed (see Böhme, 2007: 22; Roth, 1986).

While von Weizsäcker was not tried for his actions during the war, some of his medical research was also complicit with the Nazi regime. In its early years he was supportive of the shift from a social insurance system to forced labour projects. Much more seriously, Gernot Böhme suggests that writings such as this 1933 lecture develop ‘a mode of thought that could be used to legitimate crimes against humanity’ (2007: 18). Böhme argues that ‘von Weizsäcker never actually committed such crimes himself, though he shares some responsibility for at least one’ (Böhme, 2007: 18; see Baumann, 2012). This is by far the most damning charge. The institute he directed used the brains of children and young people murdered at the Loben (now Lubliniec) hospital for research. ¹⁶ The hospital was notorious for evaluating paediatric patients, treating some and poisoning others. That von Weizsäcker’s research should have used the bodies for research is abhorrent.

Some of his advocates ignore, or are ignorant of, this political controversy, which has only really become known since his death. ¹⁷ Raphaël Célis, for example, in a brief biographical note to his study of von Weizsäcker’s medical and clinical ethics, says that ‘during the Second World War he devoted all his energy to caring for injured soldiers at the military hospital in Breslau’ (2007: 23 n. 1). Hartwig Wiederbach is even more evasive, not mentioning the war, and simply noting that ‘in 1941 he was appointed, as successor of Otfrid Foerster, to the most prestigious chair in Neurology in Germany at the University in Breslau. In 1945 the Heidelberg Medical School established a chair in General Clinical Medicine especially for him’ (2009: 361). This is the same formulation used in the prospectus for his Gesammelte Schriften, published by Suhrkamp. ¹⁸ Wiederbach’s only recognition of political links comes when he mentions his family and his brother’s role as a Nazi diplomat (2009: 375 n. 2). The Viktor von Weizsäcker Gesellschaft similarly glosses over this aspect, adding only that in January 1945 he escaped Breslau. Though unstated, this was part of a mass exodus as the Russians advanced and shortly before the siege of the city. ¹⁹

Like the Binswanger translation, von Weizsäcker’s Le Cycle de la structure does not appear to have sold well: few libraries stock it and second-hand copies are hard to find. There was only a single brief review note at the time of the book’s publication (Colnort-Bodet, 1958). Foucault does not refer to von Weizsäcker in works he published, and there are only limited notes on his work in the archive. ²⁰ The request to take on the project could have come direct from the press, with whom he had worked on the Binswanger volume, or through an intermediary such as Binswanger, Canguilhem or, most likely, Ey. It may well have just been a commission for a recently graduated student, trying to supplement his income. The translation of von Weizsäcker’s Der Gestaltkreis is an important element in the story of the early Foucault, as it gives a further sense of how his work was shaped by the practice of translation. But given what we now know of von Weizsäcker’s politics, it is a disturbing one too. Ey’s preface to the translation gives no indication of this, which is more damning than it is for the text’s translators, since Ey was clearly a key figure in facilitating its publication in French.