Opher Kutner writes:

>   ... while one might remain indifferent to Locke, 
> Hume, Mill, even Kant - life will never be the same
> again after reading K.. (BTW, I think this might be
> a good criterion for naming a philosopher an existentialist,

I agree that the effect of books on ones thought, on ones view of
oneself and on ones view of the world way be very profound.
When I think of Keats' "On first looking into Chapman's Homer",
I am not sure whether such effects are limited to philosophical
texts. Upon reading Chapman's translation of Homer, Keats wrote:

          "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies,
           When a new planet swims into his ken,
           Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
           He gazed at the Pacific, - and all his men
           Look'd at each other with a wild surmise -
           Silent, upon a peak in Darien."

Perhaps Keats' poem corroborates my hypothesis that *all*
literature, including philosophy, is, in essence, poetry.

I am also reminded of of the circumstance that, if I remember
correctly, Kant credited *Hume* with awakening him from his dogmatic
slumbers, and Hume was anything but an existentialist philosopher.
(I am reciting from memory; please correct me if I am wrong.) 
Kant's epistemology appears to have had a similarly dramatic 
effect on the thought of many of his contemporaries.  Not only
did it furnish, I believe, the point of departure for the thought
of all the German romantic philosophers, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel 
and Schopenhauer, but it left its marks on the non-philosophic
literature as well. Goethe's interpretation of the Faust legend
may be construed as a commentary on Kant. Perhaps it was reading
the Critique of Pure Reason that induced on the night before Easter,
(the night before Christ arose again from the dead) Faust's
lamentation:

            "Und sehe, dasz wir nichts wissen koennen!
             Das will mir schier das Herz verbrennen ..."

and we may leave open the question of whether Faust's suicidal
despair followed upon his insight that he couldn't comprehend
Kant's logic or that he couldn't apprehend das Ding an sich.

I wonder whether it might not be a readiness (Bereitschaft)
for conversion, a longing for radical existential change on
the part of the reader, as well as the "infinitely passionate"
preachments on the part of the author, that explain why the
study of a given book at a given time precipitates ones being
"born again." 

Ernst Meyer
review@netcom.com