Dear Opher,

just at the point where I infer that the List
has been, though perhaps only temporarily, revived,
you write:

> I like the discussion on Kierkegaard's Christianity.
> Now that the list is closed,
> I'm finally learning something about him!

I trust I have your consent if I mail a copy of this letter
also to the List. I am fascinated by the variety and the
unpredictability of the returning echos.

The management of the List, if _management_ is not too
ambitious a term, seems to be evolving from a benign
administration (reminiscent of die Behoerde in Hesse's
Glasperlenspiel) into a kafkaesque authority, inscrutable
and arbitrary, in whose power it is, at a moment's notice,
or without notice at all, to rupture the strands of tentative
understanding that are sprouting among us. At this
juncture, I am inclined to suspect that the List,
like the Universe, might be a set of random events,
under the aegis of only a fantasized god, - or goddess.
The last word I heard was the paradisical injunction:
"enjoy!", so let's go after all the forbidden trees
and gorge ourselves on forbidden fruit before they
catch us. Pecca fortiter, as the executioner said.

I write as I do, in part to disabuse you of the illusion
that I might be some Socrates, which is suggested by the
role of the youthful disciple, Alcibiades or Theatetus,
in which you cast yourself, when you write:

> I sort of have a slight problem when writing to people
> twice (if not three times) my age, asking myself why
> they bother with me. Especially when it comes to 
> subjects that are closely tied with experience - religion,
> in this case. Please remember that my declarations
> are meant to subject myself to criticism and to 
> clarify myself to me as well -
> never to impose my opinions on anyone, 
> particularly on my elders.

You add:

> My only request, as I have said before,
> is that those writing to me are clear
> so that I may learn from them and perhaps repay them 
> with the kindness of structural criticism.

I will try to comply with your wishes; but I think they
may be self-defeating, for it is often the case that
the clearer and more unambiguous our words, the more 
inaccessible their meaning. I trust you will not suspect
me of peddling the Emperor's new clothes when I suggest
that ambiguity and obscurity are essential to the
communication of experience, if you like, call it
existential communication, because what is transmitted
(or shared) is not a mathematical or logical symbol,
a term, a word, or a formula to be memorized, but 
what is communicated is an ability, a mental and
a spiritual skill, of perceiving, seeing, understanding,
and thinking. In the process of communication, minds
become similar (homoiosis) or distinguish themselves
one from the other. The end-result (product) of communication
is not the transmission of code or symbol, but the
transformation of both the recipient and the sender.

The foregoing exposition should shed some light on my
disagreement with Locke Breaux about translatability.
Locke appears to me to rely on some variant of a mathematical
theory of communication (such as was proposed perhaps forty
years ago by Shannon); a model which postulates communication
to be the transmission of unambiguous data between terminals.
This theory seems to have been validated by computing (and
network) technology; but it seems quite inadequate to
explain our understanding of poetry, literature, philosophy,
theology, or in general, of anything that is of existential
concern.

You ask about my confession of Protestantism when I wrote:

>> I am very much a Protestant,
>> in the sense that I am my own rabbi, pastor and priest.
>> I read the texts (scriptures) and they live in my imagination.
>> I do not consciously permit conventional
>> or authoritative interpretations
>> to affect my religious experiences or judgment;
>> rather such authorities themselves become
>> the object of inquiry and interpretation.
>
> Innocent question: is that what is generally meant
> by a person when he calls himself a Protestant?

No, what a person generally means when he calls himself
a Protestant is that he goes to the Lutheran or Presbyterian
Calvinist or Baptist church on the corner, as distinct from
the Roman Catholic Church or the Jewish synagoge.
My redefinition, which I do not think is at all
original with me, emphasizes the independence of the
individual believer from the organized society,
symbolized by Martin Luther arising in opposition
to the totality of Roman Catholicism of his day. This
independence is made possible by direct, unmediated
access to the scripture, which, as the Word of God,
is the one indispensable instrument of salvation.
By this definition, Kierkegaard was also a Protestant,
and so, arguably, was Jesus.

I choose to extend (expand) the Scripture which is
the instrument of salvation to *all* literature,
to everything that is written. I consider every text
_sacred_ in the sense that the Bible is sacred. I
consider Hoelderlin's Ode _Der Neckar_ or his hymn _Patmos_
no less sacred than various verses of the Bible that
approvingly recount the destruction of cities and
the extermination of tribes, and perhaps a bit more so.
I have written a long (German) novel, "Die Andere",
through which this theme recurs as a Leitmotif,
and published it at http://www.thenerve2.com/lit/

You write:

> I like to think Judaism attempts to provide
> a shell for subjective personal religion. 

I agree; and I believe this to be the function of _all_
religious institutions. Mankind, however, is far from
homogeneous, and for some of us the protective shell
becomes a straight-jacket or a prison, sooner than
for others.

You continue:

> This shell is one of commandments and prohibitions,
> designated, as you said, to provide social unity ...

In this context, the hypothesis of the continuity
of external and internal law is very important.
My scholarship fails me, but I am under the impression
that Kant, and following him Schiller, and even Goethe,
whose enthusiasm for Kant was limited, believed that
there was, or should be, a correspondence between the
cosmic laws of nature, the political laws of the state,
and the inward (Freud would say: introjected) laws,
compliance with which constitutes the dignity and the freedom!
of man. It is in this sense that I interpret Goethe's
"Und das Gesetz nur kann uns Freiheit geben."
A subjectivist theory of law is, however, misleading.
Law is the very essence of objectivity; law cannot be
subjective. Genuine freedom is subjectivity, and
subjectivity is freedom from law.

You write:

> I think society plays an important part
> in existentialism insofar that it lightens
> the burden from the individual in his struggle
> for definition.  This enlightment is authentic -
> everyone is influenced by society).

That, I think, is a monumental understatement.
The fact is that each of us as an individual is
a product of society. Not only are we dependent on
society for food and shelter, but language and thought
are inconceivable in the absence of society. Society
is indispensable for our happiness. Consider the severity
of the punishment of solitary confinement. Remember
Socrates' preference for Athens over the solitude of
the countryside. Consider the derivation of the German
word Elend, (misery) from the Latin alienus, the exiled
stranger.

And yet, at the same time that we are totally
dependent on society, we are made miserable by it.
Our incapacity to be content with being integrated
into society, the need of each of us to be an individual,
to be someone special, to be different, to distinguish
ourselves from the society on which we are so utterly
dependent, seems to me to represent a dialectic no less
fundamental than the classical opposition of soul and
body, of mind and matter.

Ernst Meyer
review@netcom.com