Tag Archives: Willi Goetschel

Willi Goetschel

Professor of German and Philosophy Contact info w.goetschel@utoronto.ca Office University of Toronto Odette Hall 313 50 St. Joseph Street Toronto, ON M5S 3L5 Phone 416-926-2320 Secretary: 416-926-2324 Office Hours Wednesday 4-5pm or by appointment Classes 2023-2024 JGC1855H S Critical Theory| GER320H F Age of Goethe: Revolution and Romanticism Background Ph.D. 1989 in German, Harvard University Lic.phil I[=M.Phil] 1982 in Philosophy, Universität Zürich President, Foundation Stiftung Dialogik President, North American Heine Society General Editor, Bamidbar: Journal for Jewish Thought and Philosophy Editor, The Germanic Review Editorial Board, Weimarer Beiträge Editorial Board, Lessing Year Book 2020 Recipient of the Moses Mendelssohn Prize of the City of Dessau 2012 Fellow in Residence at the Lichtenberg Kolleg, University of Göttingen 2009 Charlotte M. Craig Distinguished Visiting Professor in German Studies, Rutgers University Teaching Interests 18th to 20th century German Literature and Thought, Enlightenment, German Jewish Culture, Critical Theory. Current Research Interests I am currently working on a project that examines the emergence of how modern philosophy theorizes difference, otherness, and alterity. The project called "Difference and Alterity in Modern Jewish Philosophy" is supported by a grant of the Social Sciences and Human Research Council. Insight Grant 2012-2020 My previous research project "The Question of ... Read More »

Amelia Glaser: “Sholem Aleichem, Russian Literary Critic”

April 17, 2014, 16:00. Munk Centre, Room 100. Sponsored by CERES. Co-sponsored by the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Al and Malka Green Program in Yiddish Studies, Centre for Jewish Studies, Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures, Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine Read More »

Translating Ourselves: Mendelssohn’s ‘Living Script’

Portrait of Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786)

March 23, 2014. 10:00 – 17:00 Jackman Humanities Building, 170 St. George Street, Room 1040. Workshop presented by the Jackman Humanities Institute Program for the Arts on Translation and the Multiplicity of Languages. Organized by Willi Goetschel.Translation is the practice of negotiating difference and alterity. But what do we do exactly when we translate? As Eva Hoffmann puts it in her novel Lost in Translation, we also translate ourselves, and this experience of our own difference is what constitutes our identity. The basic moments that define translation as paradoxical if not impossible – substitution and equivalence as the constitutive transactions that ‘carry over’ only by way of conversion, change, and transformation – produce a logic that makes translation an act that resists closure. Moses Mendelssohn introduced the striking notion of Scripture as ‘living script’ arguing that the practice of commandments represents an alternative framework for understanding law, text, and translation. Mendelssohn’s approach highlights the performative act as central to interpretation. This has productive consequences for the theorizing translation. For Mendelssohn, the notion of the ‘living script’ makes it possible to comprehend translation in terms of action rather than just a hermeneutic exercise or transfer of information. With this move, Mendelssohn offers ... Read More »