They say it is unwise to embark upon too large of a project in a dissertation. In fact, one should not consider a doctoral thesis to be something like a life’s work. And, whatever one does, one should choose a discrete topic and stay away from the lure of insoluble theoretical morasses. As I always was more obstinate than clever, I disregarded all such advice and plunged into the work you are about to read.
The question I am trying to address has been with me for more than twenty-five years. It is the question that convinced to study philosophy before attempting to learn the law. It is the question that – as a bilingual perennial immigrant working in a foreign language since the age of seventeen – has bedeviled me for my entire adult life: how can we engage with each other and take each other seriously in all of our difference when we lack any common denominator – linguistic, ethical, cultural, social, philosophical or legal? The possibility of such an endeavor has always been a matter of Faith, faith in our ability to see the human dignity in each other, faith that our shared humanity might overcome even the most impossible of obstacles, faith that what is good in each of us will help us bridge what is peculiar.
Needless to say, such a project requires a lot of acknowledgments. In the first place, I must thank all of my friends who were with me when I first encountered this problem as an insufferable teenager in a small historically Slovene village on the Italian Adriatic. Thank yous therefore go to Birte, Frida, Gunhild, Nikki, Sue, Vesna, Chris, Elvis, Italo, Kajan, Milorad, Paolo, Sammer and all of my friends who suffered through my musings on Nietzsche, Rilke, Celan, Goethe, Rimbaud, Deleuze, Yeats, Joyce, and Morrison, Bullock, Taylor, and Dobrynin. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my teachers who first nurtured my engagement with translation, with philosophy, the ambiguity of history, and the universality of the human spirit – Valerie Quinlivan, Franziska Raimund, John Plommer, Maestro Piero Poclen, Patrick Quinlivan, Dr. Paul Stachowiak, Rettore David Sutcliffe, and Henry Thomas.
Thank you further goes to my many teachers of philosophy without whom I could not have attempted this work – Catriona McKinnon, Sue Mendus, Panos Dimas, Keith Ansell-Pearson, and Martin Warner. I also have to thank a fantastic classics department at the University of Oslo without whom my in classical literature and philosophy certainly would not have allowed me to engage upon this project – Bente Lassen, Bjørg Tosterud, and Øivind Andersen.
Finally, thanks is due to my friends and colleagues who have accompanied me on the journey of the book itself – Freya Baetens, Chiann Bao, Christina
I also wish to thank my home institution, Washburn University School of Law, for its splendid support for my efforts without which I could not have completed this book.
Most of the thanks, however goes to my doctoral committee for putting up with – thank you to Joachim Zekoll and to Stefan Vogenauer, as well as to Alexander Peukert, for putting up with this work and allowing it to be printed. In fact, I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Achim for the hours of discussions and his constant advice. I could not have wished for a better Doktorvater.
On a more personal level, this project is one that would not have been possible without the constant encouragement of my parents Hildegard and Yvan, as well the indulgence at home by Jeanne, Josephine and Michael. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. We did it!
An earlier version of this work has been submitted to the Goethe Universität Frankfurt for the fulfillment of the requirements of the Doktor der Rechtswissenschaft.