 

     About secrecy: I have argued that I had no secrets,
because in a profound sense, nothing is really understood;
and to that extent, everything is secret.  The pervasive
secrecy  manifests itself in misunderstanding or
disagreement.  Everything is secret on account of the
disagreement.  Disagreement is the conclusive evidence of the
secrecy of experience.  Disagreement must be construed not as
an expression of competition or of hostility, but as a
limitation of the language with which we try to communicate.

     The optimist will consider misunderstanding as
disagreement.  The pessimist will consider disagreement as
misunderstanding.  Arguably all disagreement as misunder-
standing.  Arguably also all misunderstanding is disagreement.
Paradoxically, conclusive misunderstanding implies an
insuperable separateness of minds; disagreement implies the
acceptance of differences between individuals.  These
differences are dialectically overcome when one agrees to
disagree.  But reciprocal misunderstanding is conclusively
alienating; it cannot be bridged. One cannot understand to
misunderstand, if one understood ones misunderstanding, the
misunderstanding would vanish.

     Disagreement acknowledges about the individual that
zone of privacy which is created by the abortive attempt to
understand.  Both misunderstanding and disagreement
implicitly acknowledge the existence of secrets.  When I
boast that I have no secrets, I mean, more accurately, that I
have no secrets from the person who understands.  For the
person who does not understand, all that I am is secret.


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Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
