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A benefit of rummaging in old letters and essays
is the perspective that I gain about what I have done
and what I am doing. With respect to the Sources of Doubt
about the Conceptual World, I see the contradiction,
the paradox and the irony of proclaiming scepticism of
that world while adding to that which is to be doubted,
yet another layer of concepts e.g. the reification of among
other terms, ethical and esthetic consciousness. Even when
I first set out to write, I perceived the need of
communicating an understanding, a sensibility, a way of
seeing and hearing, an intellectual and emotional functioning,
rather than another schema, another table of contents
or another catalogue of facts or compendium of "models."
I didn't know how to accomplish such communication then,
and I don't know how to accomplish such communication now.
As a matter of fact, the circumstance that I've spent fifty years
lugging around with me my suitcase stuffed with papers which
no one will read suggests not only that I failed my my attempt
to explain myself, but that such explanation is in fact impossible:
Because it is the nature of the subjective, or of subjectivity,
to be intractable to communication, except to a very limited degree
in music and poetry. Perhaps it was wise that I gave up trying.