Talk:Always already

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Should the phrase "always already" be marked off in quotation marks to clarify the use-mention distinction? (For instance, as I have done in this sentence.) The first sentence after the title of the article is confusing otherwise because I read it as actually using the phrase "always already" instead of mentioning it. However, given the use of scare quotes in other parts of the entry, the quotation marks might be confusing in a different way.

Historical use[edit]

The Historical Use section claims that Kant uses the term in the Critique of Pure Reason. I have searched a number of editions of that book and the term is not used in any English translation I have yet come across. Unless a reference can be provided to a specific translation/edition, that sentence cannot be allowed to stand. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.5.64.141 (talk) 13:35, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like that's been fixed by citing [A346=B404].

Now if someone would just cite the Hamlet jive and decide if we're linking to Hamlet or not and if we're italicizing it or not. Right now there's Hamlet in italics & linked, without italics and linked, without italics and unlinked. Out, out, damned inconsistency! Wait, that's some Scottish lady... Rufwork (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:20, 2 December 2011 (UTC).[reply]

It's a calque from German[edit]

"Always already" comes up in translations of German phenomenology. It's a calque of German immer schon. German uses such adverbs much more than English does (English by contrast has a more fine-grained array of verb tenses). In phenomenology, immer schon means that a state of affairs obtains, not because a human being perceived it for example, but because it necessarily, inherently, or eternally obtains. Immer schon is also a perfectly ordinary everyday expression in German, as in the phrase Was ich immer schon wissen wollte ...: "What I've always wanted to know ...". Note that the English equivalent gets by with just one adverb for German's two: the present perfect tense carries the rest of the sense, namely the idea that the wanting-to-know occurs over a period of the past that continues up to the present. As for Ricœur who is cited in the article: French philosophers have also calqued the German immer schon as toujours-déjà. So it's true that the phrase occurs in English in literary discourse, but it's not really English and some lazy or misguided translators of centuries (or century) past are to blame for it. Wegesrand (talk) 16:19, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Writers do not appear to be consistent on whether "always already" present attributes are inherent or merely perceived. See for example Judith Butler on the Rodney King verdict: "He is hit in exchange for the blows he never delivered, but which he is, by virtue of his blackness, always about to deliver." Butler does not propose that King actually was going to hit the police officers, but that jurors informed by racial ideology perceived it that way. 24.7.14.87 (talk) 20:15, 24 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]