Studia Phaenomenologica

Volume 5, 2005

Translating Heidegger's Sein und Zeit

Heideggers Hauptwerk in Neugriechisch

In this paper I try to underline both the positive and negative circumstances in which I began translating Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit in Greek. In 1971 I started, as a young student of philosophy, to study and translate this book, although I misunderstood it and considered it a paradigm of “existentiale”, not existential philosophy. I benefited essentially from both the English and the French translations and I’ve also received great help from my Greek mentor, E. N. Platis. I published my translation in two volumes, one in 1978 and the other in 1985 and the critics have been very positive. At the beginning, I gave extended explanations about the translation problems and my solutions in a paper published in 1974. In the following years, I wrote articles about the Heideggerian concepts, in order to facilitate a better understanding of his philosophy.