Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter.
Consider Pavlov's dog.
When I presented him with a piece of meat, he salivated, reflexly.
1) Was his salivation voluntary?
When there was a knocking on the door, the dog started to bark.
2) Was the barking voluntary?
When the stranger walked into the room, the dog lunged at him.
3) Was the lunging voluntary?
When I restrained the dog from attacking the stranger,
the dog bit me instead.
4) Was the dog's biting me voluntary?
If 1) was involuntary, why should 4) not also be considered involuntary?
If 2) was involuntary, why should 4) not also be considered involuntary?
If 3) was involuntary, why should 4) not also be considered involuntary?
If 4) was voluntary, why should 1,2 and 3) not also be considered voluntary?

My interpretation is that the dispute about whether actions are
voluntary or involuntary resembles the dispute about whether
a glass is half full or half empty. The answer depends on ones
disposition. The optimist will say half full, the pessimist
will say half empty. The contents of the glass remain unchanged.
Furthermore, if half full and half empty have precise physical
meanings, the terms voluntary and involuntary are ambiguous,
and when we disagree about their application, that's probably
because we disagree about their meaning.

The reference to paideia in Chapter 7, has a private significance.
One of my Harvard teachers was Werner Jaeger, a German immigrant with
a Jewish wife, who had been recruited to Harvard from Chicago by
James Bryant Conant. President Conant was a chemist, but understood
that Harvard also needed some humanism, some culture and maybe even Kultur.
Therefore Conant installed Jaeger as University Professor.
I visited Professor Jaeger in his Widener office on many occasions.
At least once he invited me for lunch to the Window Shop on Brattle
Street. I remember the Wiener Schnitzel. They were very tasty.
Jaeger told me stories from his life, how he grew up in a little town
along the lower Rhine and taught himself Greek. "Herodot war mein
Gymnasium." (Herodotus was my high school) he explained.  At the
university in Berlin he was initially interested in philosophy and
studied with Wilhelm Dilthey (of Natur und Geisteswissenschaften fame)
but because of his facility in ancient Greek, he was recruited by the
famous classicist Ulrich Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, who obtained for Jaeger
a professorship in Kiel. Jaeger then published an interpretation of
Aristotle's writings in the context of Aristotle's life. The book was
very favorably received and secured him a professorship in Berlin.
Jaeger then set to work on his major opus, a study of Greek civilization
which he entitled "Paideia, the ideals of Greek culture", a study of
education in classical Greece. This book, also a product
of remarkable erudition, was however ideologically biased in favor
of an authoritarian society. Jaeger, personally, was a very kind and
gracious person. He liked me, and gave me, when I was already enrolled
in Medical School a private seminar on Plato's Protagoras. And I, of
course, flattered by his attention,  thought the criticism of his
Harvard colleagues, particularly an Englishman named Eric Havelock,
with whom I had read Aeschylus' Prometheus, was just another example
of academic envy. It was not until years later, after Jaeger's death,
that I stumbled on the Isaiah passage in the Septuagint which I have
Albert blurt out in Greek: Paideia irenes hemon ep auton.
This the King James Version scholars translate: The chastisement
of our peace was upon him, and Luther translates: Die Strafe liegt
auf ihm, auf dass wir Frieden haetten. An accurate translation of
Paideia might be "discipline of children", - and only then did I
begin to understand that I could no longer subscribe to Jaeger's
authoritarian bias, if only because I don't believe children should
be disciplined. In the paideia episode of das Siebte Kapitel,
Albert's understanding and interpretation is my own; I put into
Doehring's mouth the words in which Werner Jaeger might have answered me.

Jochen