Dear Marion,

You are, of course, correct, in challenging the
provocative account that I sketched as a preface
to my travel diary of 1984, of the meaning which
the journey has for the traveller, I sent you that
text, which I had just transcribed from a pdf scan,
not as a declaration of dogma, but as a conversation
piece. Obviously travelers with different personalities,
with different purposes and with different goals will
also have divergent sentiments about their journeys.
The travellers of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales come
to mind.

I've been preoccupied with the issues of idealization
and deidealization for several weeks. I haven't sent
you my notes on the subject, because I didn't think
you were interested. If I was in error, tell me, and
you'll be inundated with more than you really wanted
to know.

I conclude that thinking, - at least my thinking -, 
is playing - ein Spielen -  with which I while away
my life much as if I were improvising on my harpsichord.
There is no end to thinking, to inventing and playing
words or ideas just as there is no end to inventing
or playing music. In each case, the activity is its
own purpose, - an end in itself.

I observe that authors are at risk to become entangled
in the words they use. Heracleitus said everything was
change, for Parmenides everything was being, Plato had
his ideas and Aristotle had causes as a universal
explanation. Spinoza's key word was "substance", Kant
explained it all in terms of Vernunft und Verstand,
Schopenhauer, Wille und Vorstellung.

The description of politics and ethics, of Geistes-
wissenschaften und Naturwissenschaften, as idealization;
and the existential deconstruction of these monumental
intellectual efforts as deidealization seem to me to
provide a new frame of reference, a potentially very
useful coordinate system for displaying and analyzing
the objective world about which we are forever
negotiating with one another. An opportunity of
playing with words and ideas, and no end in sight.

Jochen