Dear Marion,

About Innerlichkeit, - I neglected to answer the questions
in your last letter. What you write is always bubbling with
spontaneity, and I, meyered in the sulci of my brain, am at
risk for "answering" your letters, before I ever read them, -
certainly before I bestow on them the meditation they deserve.

It's one of the strengths of subjectivity - Innerlichkeit -
that it facilitates the assimilation into the individual spirit
of the most diverse of phenomena, with reference to myself, the
fusion of Judaism and Christianity into a single "religious"
experience, for the simple and elementary reason that it is
these two traditions to which I have been exposed and that I
took them seriously. Had Buddhism, or Shintoism - or any other
religion been a similar influence on my thought, I assume that
I would have incorporated them into my view of myself and my world
in a similar way. I would have considered myself the authentic
Buddhist and/or Shintoist as well, just as I in fact consider
myself not only the authentic Protestant Christian, but also the
authentic Jew.  Such is the power of subjectivity.  I hear you
laughing half way across the continent, but that's alright, because
I like to hear you laugh. When I hear you laugh, I know you're
happy.

The premise of my considerations is the fate of human nature that
is both individual and social, both private and public. I suppose
one might discover (or invent) historical reasons why latterly the
dichotomy between self and society should overshadow or displace
the classical dichotomy between soul and body. What is common to
both dichotomies is their dialectical structure; and this dialectic
is of basic functional significance because it facilitates the
transformation of otherwise incomprehensible and indigestible static
experience into the dynamic process of understanding, of thinking,
speaking, lecturing, writing, publishing and just maybe even becoming
a landmark in intellectual history, - like a sphinx or a mummy.

As we have different tastes in food, and perhaps require different
diets, so we have different needs for society and for solitude,
neither of which we can do without. Such a disparity in psycho-social
needs is a significant difference between Margrit and myself. Such
disparities may be understood as having in part a genetic, and in
part an environmental basis.

So far as the genetic basis is concerned, a person of physical or
intellectual strength will be less dependent on the assistance of
his neighbors than a person who is relatively weak and helpless
and must rely on assistance from the next anonymous passer-by for
changing a flat tire, or programming a computer, or resolving a
question of tax or of inheritance law. The person who is by nature
less dependent on others will hold them in lower esteem, will be
more arrogant. - That's another way of putting it.

As for the environmental influences, when society fails you, you
lose your trust in your fellow humans, and have no alternative but
to try to go it alone. As for myself, I suspect that it was my
grandmother's letting me scream for a month in 1931 while my parents
were away im Rheinland und im Taubertal, admiring the grandeur
of Deutsche Kultur that engendered my separation anxiety, and 
persuaded me on a very fundamental level not to trust society,
but to learn to depend on only myself, which, in other words, turned
me "inward", made me susceptible to music, to poetry and to
"philosophy". How much the Nazi experience reinforced this propensity
I don't know,  but that experience surely didn't enhance my trust
in my fellow humans.

Rightly or wrongly, I interpret the efflorescence of pietism and
"inwardness" which characterized some of the art of the latter
half of the 17th and the first half of the 18th centuries,
specifically in the music of Bach, as a reaction to the devastation
of trust which must have been the sequel of the terrible 30 years'
war (1618-1648).

As for Judaism and myself, it's obvious that most Jews are preoccupied
with dancing around the golden calf, and have been from the time
that Moses clambered down Mt. Sinai. But I refuse to believe that
Moses secretly winked at the dancers, and said that what they were
doing was o.k., but not to let on that he had noticed. And I do
believe that he was so enraged that he shattered the heavy tablets
that he had lugged all the way down the mountain. And I insist that
my Moses is the Moses of the Prophets, that my Moses is the true
Moses and that I am the real Jew. If it makes a difference, I know
Spinoza's on my side.

Jochen