Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter. I read it in the context of the
official weather record, according to which on the Sunday evening
on which you wrote it, the temperature in St. Paul was 11 degrees F.,
and the wind NE at 9 mph. I hope the elevator didn't plunge one and
a half floors on your way home, and that you found your apartment
welcoming and warm.

Today was one of those mornings when I drive Klemens to the airport for
his monthly trip to Nashville. This time his departure was at 7 a.m.
from Manchester NH. To be there at 6 a.m., as required, he had to leave
at 4:45, breakfast therefore at 4:30. Since I must be sure not be be late,
I set the alarm for 3:45. However, having gone to bed last evening at the
very early hour of 10 p.m., I had been awake before the radio started
blaring.  I slept very lightly.  With apologies to Heinich Heine:
Denk ich an Margrit in der Nacht, so werd ich um den Schlaf gebracht.
(What Heine had written was: Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht,
so werd ich um den Schlaf gebracht. If I think of Germany at night,
I'm robbed of sleep.) Before Margrit left, when I described
to her the predicament created by a lengthy terminal illness
spent in the hospital and the nursing home, leading to the
exhaustion of her funds, Margrit had replied:
How many sleeping tablets does it take to finish the job? 
I contemplated her "care givers" demanding more money,
her refusal to let her family care for her,
her own subsequent threats of or actual attempts at suicide,
because she could accept only her family's money,
but not her family's help.... a Eugene O'Neill style tragedy.
In yesterday's news: a 98 year old resident
of a New Bedford MA nursing home, charged with
murdering her 100 year old roommate, who she believed
was taking up more than her share of the room.
The district attorney charged the 98 year old
demented woman with murder, but declined to bring
charges against the nursing home for its neglect.
With these circumstances on my mind,
I checked my e-mail at 4 a.m. this morning.
Your letter, for which I thank you again,
gave me other matters to think about.

I'm embarrassed to note once more, that I find you
and myself to be in agreement on the issues you discussed.
Yet I must make some comment, else there would be no
occasion for a reply.

You write:
 
> By "free will" I mean the ability to carry out an act pursuant
> to a conscious intention. 

We've discussed this topic in the exchange of Sept 19 - 21. We differ
in what each of us means by "free will". You, if I understand correctly,
have in mind the untrammeled (free) exercise of spontaneous action.
The issue for me is not the existence of such untrammeled spontaneous
action, but the circumstance that I have no control over the spontaneity.
In your vocabulary, if I understand correctly, free will is sponteneity,
and the emphasis is on "free".
In my vocabulary, free will is my ability to control that spontaneity,
and the emphasis is on "will". It's an interesting difference,
and something to think about. 

My trip to Harvard Square appears to be an expression of free will,
because I "decided to go" while I might also have "decided not to go."
The purported freedom was not in making the trip, but in the decision
to make the trip. That decision, according to you, was an expression of
free will, because it was not opposed. That decision, according to me,
was not an expression of free will, because it was spontaneous, and as
such, beyond my control.

I acknowledge that in citing the Harvard Square trip, I contradicted
myself. I cited that trip to demonstrate that most of my actions
I do inadvertently, unconsciously, unaware that I am doing them or
that I have done them. Such obliviousness is partly attributable
to the memory loss of old age, but it's real nonetheless. Does the
Alzheimer's patient have free will?
 
You ask:

> But then why did you write (December 6th):

>> Thank you for the absolution,
>> but it doesn't relieve me of guilt.
>> In my world, where there is no free will, all actions
>> are involuntary and accordingly, predestination reigns:
>> "Alles nur nach Gottes Willen." Bach Kantate #72.     

Because I recognize my actions, even when I "decide" to do them,
to be spontaneous, and because I have no control over their
spontenous origin. The circumstance that there is no external
coercion seems irrelevant to me. More of the same in:
http://home.earthlink.net/~jochenmeyer/2009/20091212_00.html
a passage which is in need of stylistic improvement.

I believe that mere existence entails "guilt". Consider the
perspective of "climate change". Each individual who lives on
earth unavoidably contributes to it because she exhales
carbon dioxide, - and even more so if she lives in Minnesota
where the temperature is 11 degrees F. and she must burn
fossil fuel in order to stay alive. Subsequent to Adam's fall,
all of his descendants share in the guilt of (his) existence;
and what sort of religion would deny that the God who made
the world also sustains it and controls it.


> This was, of course, referring to your struggle
> with Margrit over the future and, who knows,
> perhaps over the past. 
> Why do you write that you have no free will
> in your interactions with Margrit?
> And if this were true, what would you be guilty of? 

> Do you believe that you wrote the above quote of your own free will,
> or was it Till Eulenspiegel's fingers depressing the keys,
> merrily saddling you with a dramatic, hard-to-defend, declaration?

Till Eulenspiegel did it.

> I've reread Chapter 7 several times and am still filled
> with admiration at what you've written. 
> I reconnected with the print-out of Chapter 1
> that I made some weeks ago, and will give it a try. 
> I also never finished the Prodigal Son, and plan to go back to it. 
> So you see, I have plenty to read.

I need only one reader, and I'm pleased and grateful that for
the time being at least, you're it. No obligation to continue.
If there's anything you would like rewritten in English, please
let me know. I would like to rewrite in English everything that
is in German and vice versa, - but that's impossible. I've finally
made a beginning of editing some of my notes for the Tagebuch 2009
entries on my web site; and I'm mulling over about what's going to
happen in the Katenus mansion that rainy Sunday, the day before the
trial.

> I read your Plato / Epicurus notes a couple of times
> with great interest.  It's interesting how they worried
> about different aspects of the truthfulness
> (correspondence to reality) of knowledge and beauty.. 
> Plato worried that people would judge incorrectly
> that a particular assertion matched the ideal of truth,
> or that a particular object incarnated the ideal of beauty. 
> Epicurus, in contrast, was concerned that the ideal of truth
> might be incorrect when painstakingly studied against empirical reality;
> the ideal of beauty a distortion
> of some of the parameters of beautiful objects. 

> It's interesting to think about how a ruler would go about
> governing the Republic if imbued with each of these perspectives.

If you have time, this might interest you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_Letter_(Plato)

> I wonder about the relationship between the Platonic Ideal
> and the progress of science.  You wrote:

>> Although the seductive naivete of Epicurean sensationalism
>> would entice us to repudiate Plato, sober review of our
>> scientific heritage suggests that we cannot afford to
>> jettison the Platonic ideal. From the physics of Galileo,
>> Kepler, Copernicus and Newton to the relativity and quantum
>> theories of contemporary physicists, to digital computer
>> science, to the calculations on which modern technology
>> and economics are based, all the logic, and all the mathematics
>> which make the modern world go around are in essence expressions
>> of Platonic ideals.  Plato was a mathematician, and his
>> epistemology as the framework for the ideal is the ultimate
>> of mathematical and historical models. The characteristic of
>> these models is their intrinsic symbolism. It is the symbolic
>> nature of language and of mathematics which accounts for their
>> unlimited communicability. Platonic idealism implemented
>> in the symbolic theories of science is indispensable to the
>> communal intellectual effort which constitutes the human
>> achievement of at least the past two millenia.

You argue:
> But the development of Physics and Astronomy
> has necessitated the repeated rejection
> of previously-held Platonic-like ideals. 
> These included the idea that the heavenly bodies
> revolved around a stationary earth,
> the idea that planetary orbits
> had to have the "perfect" cosmic shape, i.e. spherical,
> and so forth.  Adherence to these ideals
> slowed the development of science. 
> Thus the fierce adherance to a priori beliefs
> about reality often creates obstacles to science,
> while painstaking study of empirical evidence
> and the willingness to jettison earlier paradigms,
> as Einstein did, often leads to important advances. 

I don't disagree. However, the circumstance that the perfection
which characterizes the Platonic ideal is never attained does
not invalidate its serving as a pattern for human intellectual
activity. Whenever we strive for the "correct" definition of a word,
whenever we seek the "correct" solution to a mathematical problem
we are invoking a (Platonic) ideal. The circumstances that the
definition will be improved upon, and that a better solution will
be found, do not vitiate the original determination to find a
correct definition or solution.  To me the significance of the
ideal is the existence of a target at which I must aim. Indeed,
the concepts of "sense perception" with which the empiricist
would supplement (or replace) the Platonic ideal, is in itself
an idealization, and so of course is Epicurus' atomic physics,
which I did not have time to consider. Fortunately, Nathaniel
did not permit his thoughts to be corrupted by mine. If he had
been persuaded by my arguments, he would probably have gotten
a bad grade.

> Condolences on the death today, in Belmont,
> of renowned economist Paul Samuelson, at age 94.

Paul Samuelson is credited with having replaced the literary
treatment of economics rendered by eminences of previous generations,
such as Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Ricardo, and most recently,
Joseph Schumpeter, with a mathematical approach.
I'm very much interested, and somewhat sceptical. Contemporary
mathematical economics relies on many assumptions of which I
cannot be persuaded and which which are at odds with the way
I have lived my life and practiced my profession.
(You've seen this several times; I cite it for reference only:)
http://home.earthlink.net/~ernstmeyer/glaucoma/letter04.html
Is it reasonable for me to assume that my world is radically
different from that of everyone else? If that were the case,
would it make sense for me to make any attempt at communication
at all?

Jochen