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Thank  you for sending me copies or your correspondence with
Jonathan Smith. I have much sympathy for him.   I  remember
how  I struggled to maintain my own personality during Medi-
cal School, - by participating in  Werner  Jaegers  seminars
and extracting German periodicals for Vietor's book on Niet-
zsche (which he never completed), and during  my  internship
by  reading  Aristotles'  metaphysics  and  Husserl  on phe-
nomenology.  I think the awkwardness of Smith's  attempt  to
realize his personality makes it all the more important that
you should try to help him.

It seems to me that the most constructive approach  for  you
(which  I think you have taken,) is to re-enforce the reali-
ties of his (professional) life; that his getting  his  work
done  in  a timely manner and doing it well is the precondi-
tion of his doing any scientific research; that in order for
research to be feasible, it must have the endorsement of his
colleagues, and it must receive funding.  I  think  it  will
minimize  the  unavoidable emotional trauma to him if a) you
yourself do not reject his proposals, but that you also  not
endorse  them, on the eminently truthful grounds that you do
not understand them, - and let him devote some of his energy
to  trying  to  explain to you what he means and what he in-
tends.  Such an effort will possibly clarify his own  think-
ing.  b)  explain to him that you do not think his proposals
would be persuasive to his colleagues, and that the  initial
task  for him would be to come up with proposals which would
indeed be acceptable.

I think Smiths problem is a very interesting and  important
one and that a great deal can be learned from it. I think of
the decades that Goethe spent in trying to habilitate an un-
conventional  view  of  nature, and of all the theories dis-
carded by our conventional dogmatics.  The  prerequisite  of
meaningful  theory  is not that it be "true" or even instru-
mentally effective, but that it be  cogent,  consistent  and
compelling.  Smith's  task  is to improve the quality of his
thinking. It seems to me that you can help  him  with  that;
and that in the process you yourself will learn a great deal
about public and private thought.

It is late and I am too tired to say well  what  I  want  to
say.

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Copyright 2005, Ernst Jochen Meyer
