Dear Marion,

Your letter raises so many questions of interest
on which I enjoy sounding off, that I shall "sacrifice"
(what am I saying?) style to substance and content myself
with annotating your many faceted paragraphs.

> I came in for a few hours,
> but then went back home to sleep a little more,
> and now have returned since the late afternoon,
> working to the accompaniment of "Die tote Stadt",
> an opera by Erich Korngold that I had never heard before,
> and am now really impressed with.

I need to emulate you and try to escape my cocoon
of 18th and early 19th century "classical" music.

> The freedom I have here to come and go as I please,
> work when I want, usually at night when almost no-one is around,
> keeps me at this job.

I'm very sympathetic and share your preferences.

> First, I think you're right
> that friendships and family relationships intergrade;
> they need not be so different. 
> One of the pleasures of friendships is to do things together....
> take a hike, build something, listen to music, etc. 
> Having experienced portions of life together
> enriches the experience and ties you together. 
> Of course this is what family life is about.  

Since accomplishment (work) of one sort another is all I care about,
the usual instruments of socialization:
formal dinners, parties or reunions are not congenial to me.
My relationships are invariably associated with projects,
with the creation of something or other,
as in the case of the correspondence between you and myself,
where the purpose is the clarification of our ideas,
which, to my mind, is most important of all.

> Regarding the Holocaust as History,
> of course it's history and deserving of research,
> re-thinking, recording witness recollections, etc. 
> What I was objecting to is your assertion
> that we can't know or understand the past,

I'm sorry you misunderstood. That is not the meaning that
I intended.

> that that is a hopeless quest that we would do well to give up on,

Hopeless only in the context of immediacy.
When Odysseus longed for Ithaca, the longing was present and immediate,
but Ithaca was in the past and far away.
My concern for the Holocaust is immediate and compelling,
but that concern brings the Holocaust "close" to me only metaphorically.
My knowledge about the Holocaust can be augmented without end,
as can my knowledge about the First World War, or about
the Napoleonic Wars, or about the Thirty Years' War
or about any other even in history.
If I immerse myself in these catastrophes, tears may come to my eyes,
I may have nightmares concerning past events, -
the nightmares and the tears are present and immediate,
but they cannot resurrect the reality.  It was not the reality,
but the history of that reality which provoked them.

> that only the present can be known. 
Once the present is "known", it is already past, it is something
to be recited, to be told, - etwas das erzaehlt wird - it is history.

> I don't agree with any of that. 
Agreement is superfluous.
Whether "understanding" is possible, I don't know.

> Of course there are gaps, misinterpretations,
> errors and misunderstandings in the "historical record"
> through which we try to know the past,
> but that just makes our knowledge of the past imperfect,
> incomplete, as is our knowledge of the present.

I don't disagree. Consciousness, experience, Erleben, however,
entails also something more than "knowledge" and is not subsumed
in concepts or words. E.g. I can describe a headache, analyse,
and explain it until the cows come home. But I need to feel the
pain of the headache before I can have the experience of what it's
like to have a headache. I contemplate my awareness of the present as
being analogous to an optical illusion. The illusion for example that
makes parallel lines extending into the distance appear to converge. -
And there are many others. With respect to parallel lines the issue is
whether they are in fact convergent as they seem. With respect
to my awareness of the present, the issue is whether the account
of the present, i.e. its history, has an existence independent
of my present consciousness. If so, where is the bridge from 
consciousness to history? If not, where is the boundary between the two? 
I consider "history of the present" to be a paradox, a conceptual illusion,
strictly comparable to an optical illusion, a genuine aporia,
an insoluble dilemma, sufficiently rich to fertilize uncounted
tenured professorships of philosophy for an indefinite future.

> Finally I agree that institutions and cultural leaders
> in the United States (as well as ordinary people)
> did practice or condone abuses of human rights
> similar to what was done on a larger scale in Nazi concentration camps. 
> Most individuals are strongly guided in their personal behavior
> by societal expectations and perspectives of the time. 
> Very few make individual decisions about right and wrong. 
> Most are too frightened to think for themselves
> against the group's opinion,
> and they want the reassurance and social rewards
> of being accepted by the group as one of their own.

> In the 1930s and '40s, sterilizing the "unfit"
> (e.g. mentally ill or poor people or criminals)
> was considered a reasonable and prudent policy for society. 
> Political leaders and the professional classes
> were thought capable of making responsible decisions
> that overrode the interests of the underclass members. 
> Likewise leaders and professionals were given leave
> to sacrifice individual citizens for the general good of society. 
> Soldiers were exposed to poison gases, radiation, drugs, etc.
> in the interests of science and to help society
> learn the consequences of such exposure.
> Some black men with syphilus were left untreated
> so that the course of the disease could be studied, and so forth.  

> Nazi ideology wasn't invented de novo. 
> It harvested (and then magnified and distorted)
> ideas that had developed with the times
> and were floating about in society. 
> Many of the same ideas were afloat in Europe and America......
> Eugenics, for example.
> So what was happening in your hospital was not unusual,
> not out of step with mainstream thinking
> in Europe and America at the time. 

> After living through the Nazi period though,
> Western societies have become much more suspicious
> of the motives and practices of elites,
> and much more protective of the rights of individuals.
> We can rejoice a little on that score.

I don't know which is more deplorable
the tyranny of the elite or the tyranny of the mob.
I see no evidence of improvement.

> But now I want to get your perspectives
> on two subversive ideas I have:

> 1. I am not in favor of society's preserving /
> extending the life of seriously "defective" fetuses or infants,
> particularly when the problems
> they were born with are expected to lead
> to considerable suffering. 
> Since most parents limit the number of offspring they produce,
> it seems more sensible to me to encourage parents
> to let seriously compromised infants die,
> and try and have another healthy child. 
> Clearly, though, this leads right into the Nazi swamp.

I don't trust society to make decisions about life and death.
I'm more inclined to trust the individual, i.e. myself with
such decisions. I very much question the wisdom and feasibility of
presuming to preserve life at all costs. I believe the value of life
is a function of consciousness. I believe the value of an individual
who is "brain dead" to be negligible. Although the newborn has
great potientiality for life, I believe in actuality the
consciousness of the newborn is severely limited, and I can
follow the reasoning that lead the Greeks, at some stages of
their culture, to condone infanticide. In theory I am not opposed
to euthanasia, but I believe our society to be morally corrupt,
to be suffused with hatred to such an extent, that in our culture,
euthanasia and murder would become indistinguishable. I consider
the fetus-worship of the anti-abortionists to be an expression of
primitive superstition by persons who do not understand what life is.

> 2. (Now you will really be outraged.) 
> You come back again and again to the depersonalization of medical practice. 
> Well, I can see that the impersonal,
> anonymous type of medicine that predominates in the U.S. today
> deprives patients of the positive effects
> of inter-personal communication with the doctor,
> receiving his (her) warmth, kindness, encouragement, reassurance. 
> I agree with you that far. 
> Yet many services performed by physicians and especially surgeons
> (and Radiologists) are akin to having your car serviced. 
> A careful, accurate diagnosis is required,
> and this is then followed up with a prescription,
> or physical therapy, or the excising or realignment of a body part.
> True, it's very important that someone thoroughly explain
> to the patient what the options are, what treatments are available,
> how they work, etc. 
> It need not necessarily be the doctor or surgeon who does that.  
>  
> I get it that it's important to you personally
> to have a personal relationship with your patients. 
> But is this always important in delivering 
> optimal medical practice to the patient? 
> I get the impression that you believe
> that a physician or surgeon cannot make a fully satisfactory diagnosis
> or deliver optimal treatment
> without an open personal relationship with the patient. 
> True?  Why?

The question itself suggests that we disagree about what it means
to "make a diagnosis" and what it means "to deliver (optimal) treatment."
I agree that a computer can be set up to select a label according
to pre-programmed criteria, and a robot can be designed to perform
a mechanical procedure. However, labels related to reality only remotely 
if at all, are meaningless, and robotic mechanics satisfy the needs of
the patient only if they solve all his or her problems. I infer that
you've never been seriously ill yourself, otherwise you wouldn't
ask the question. But please don't get sick, merely to understand
what it means to be given a diagnosis and what it means to be treated.

> Here's a question for you:
> Would you think it a good idea for Margrit
> to temporarily leave her Miata in Konnarock
> (ed: temporarily to leave her Miata in Konnarock)
> and buy a used car, or lease one,
> until next spring or summer when retrieving her clothes
> and Miata from Konnarock would be less problematic? 
> I haven't written to Margrit about this type of topic. 
> I'm sounding you out before I propose something you're dead set against.  

Thank you for considering these difficult issues. I have two cars
(Dodge Minivans 1997 and 2005) used by Klemens and myself, and
by Rebekah and Nathaniel on occasion when they are home from college.
Either of these cars is potentially available to Margrit to drive.
I think she is diffident to do so, because when she was last here
with her own car, she had difficulty backing it out of the driveway.
She doesn't want to ask me for help. She's afraid of the difficulties
of driving in the city, and I think rightly so. She is, after all, 
eighty-one years old. About a year ago, she asked me to accompany her
in the 1997 car on an errand. As we drove down Concord Avenue,
I explained that Massachusetts law requires, and drivers expect
a vehicle entering a rotary to yield to traffic; but as we approached
Fresh Pond Circle, Margrit did just the opposite: she accelerated  -
she wasn't going to have me tell her how to drive - almost causing us
to be broad-sided by an approaching car.  She explained that it was
only my presence that was responsible for the near accident. She
hasn't asked to drive one of my cars since, - and whenever we see
her drive off in her own or in a rented car, Margaret and I tremble. 
I don't know whether she will stop driving before she has a serious
accident; but her judgment is so poor - driving with an overly stuffed
car, with an opaque rear window, leaving in the late afternoon to drive
into the night when departing from Konnarock for Detroit, that I am
fearful of encouraging her to drive, - and of course fearful also of
discouraging her.  Margrit has always prided herself on risky behavior,
even after two fractures from falling, first her right humerus, then her
collar bone, she goes up and down stairs carrying clothes in both arms,
she eats food which is more or less spoiled, and when I ask her to be
careful, she berates me for always telling her what to do.  I conclude
that anything I might say would be counter-productive, and the only
possibility of my helping her is to stand by and try to catch her
when she falls. (She's has a second recurrence of diarrhea and Klemens
tells me - Margrit herself hasn't mentioned it, - that before she fell
ill, she booked a cruise from Miami to Porto Rico, to leave sometime in
December. As my father would have said: Froehliche Weihnachten!
Jochen