 
                         20060601.01

     Shall we talk spontaneously about what comes to mind.
or shall we set ourselves the task of talking about a
specific concept?  I look simply and directly at the
question: What are we going to talk about, what are we going
to write about.  Implicit in those questions is the premise
that one is to talk, or write about a concept as distinct
from writing simply about what comes to mind, spontaneously
or "through the senses," i.e. about what is seen and heard
within the span of consciousness.

     Whenever a concept as distinct from immediate intuition
becomes the premise of discussion, one has crossed the
boundary into a landscape however primitive and
unsophisticated that is in essence philosophical.  When one
thinks about a concept one thinks about thought, a formula
that immediately conjures Goethe's caution: "Wie hast du's
nur so weit gebracht. Mein Kind ich hab es gut gemacht, ich
habe nie ueber das Denken gedacht."  To think about a
concept, to think about thought, is to lay the foundation, if
not the cornerstone, of a pattern, of a framework of thought,
in other words, of a system, of a philosophical system. And
that brings to mind Nietzsche's dictum, "Der Wille zum System
ist der Wille zur Luege."  These considerations raise the
question whether thinking about thought is a natural and
perhaps even necessary function of mind, or whether it is an
extravagance, an aberration, possibly even a perversion of
that function.

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Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
