Dear Marion,

The Medicare (provider) enrollment application for which I
am responsible is in the mail. The obstacle: that Medicare
wants to stop mailing checks to providers and to rely
exclusively on electronic funds transfer; at the same time
refusing payee accounts to which persons other than the payee
have access. Since all my checking accounts are held jointly,
it was necessary to go to the bank, to open a savings account
in my name only, to obtain certification from the bank's officer
and to complete another 29 page application.  That's the kind
of gutter lawyering at which I'm very good, when I put my mind
to it, - but I'd prefer to put my mind to other issues.

Specifically, to the "theory" of knowledge. When I composed the manuscript
of which I sent you a pdf version, I was imbued with the Aristotelian
notion - which still survives in 19th century Comtean positivism,
(and incidentally also in contemporary medical education) that there
is a hierarchy of knowledge, and that understanding its "first
principles" is the key to comprehending the whole kit and kaboodle.
In the years in which I wrote the essay I sent you, I was looking
for such "first principles" that would unlock the secrets of "all" knowledge.
In Faust's words: Dass ich erkenne was die Welt im Innersten zusammenhaelt.
That secret I thought I gleaned from Rilke's "Und die findigen Tiere
merken es schon, dass wir nicht sehr verlaesslich zuhaus sind in der
gedeuteten Welt". Accordingly, the  first principle turned out to be a
negative one: doubt, Zweifel, the surmise that the conceptual world is
largely, if not entirely illusory. I toyed with the notion that two separate
facets of consciousness reflect respectively time and space. Inasmuch
as my awareness of time is focussed on the present, and the present
is defined by my action, I denominated my consciousness of (myself in)
time as ethical consciousness. Inasmuch as my awareness of space is
determined by (the quality of) what is immediate to my senses, I
denominated my consciousness of myself in space as esthetic consciousness.
This evening such conceptual symmetry seems to me contrived, but
I find myself unwilling to dispense with it entirely. The consequences
of such analysis are immediate and compelling. Only a temporal stage
which is receptive to my own action is real to me; hence representations
of times past are unavoidably adumbrated by unreality. I find it
intellectually impossible to cozy up to events that are described
as happening in centuries or millenia now inaccessible except to the
imagination. Hence the scepsis wth which I consider Darwinism.
Similarly remote from my experience are scenes which can
only be inferred by a chain of reasoning. These also are properly
subject to doubt. The symbolic account of experience as a plausible
if not indeed necessary subject of doubt is the appropriate subject
for another chapter. Yet another important topic in waiting is the 
ambiguity implicit in the term "knowledge" when one starts to distinguish
between "knowing that" and "knowing how", zwischen Wissen und Koennen.
However I've sprayed more than enough theory for one letter.

Meanwhile Mengs and Joachim are back in Katenuses house, having a light
supper and preparing themselves to describe to Katenus what happened
to them, what they saw and what they heard on their walk at the beach.
It occurred to me that having Mengs and Joachim tell the story within
the story is analogous to the play within the play in Hamlet and offers
stylistic and thematic opportunities which I haven't yet explored.
It's started to rain, and rain heavily. Mengs and Joachim are trapped
again, this time not on the beach encircled by juvenile furies, but
in the stately palace of Katenus and his unassuming queen. As I mentioned,
there's a Last Supper in the offing, and a calm before the storm of
the quasi-judicial proceedings on Monday. A lot to think about and
to develop.

Jochen