Dear Marion,

Your letter has given me much to think about. The second coat
whitewash of my spirit takes precedence over the second coat
of whitewash of the kitchen cabinets. For clarity's sake,
I quote you in full.  You wrote:

_     Thankyou for your letter, including your explication
_     of Goethe's epigram.  It is certainly possible that
_     at least some of Margrit's criticism of you stemmed
_     from feelings of inferiority. However Margrit frequently
_     volunteered the notion that you had always been much
_     more gifted than she, that you have remarkable abilities
_     that she could never hope to match.  She accepted this
_     very consciously and forthrightly, with full admiration
_     for what you could achieve.  It was fundamental to her
_     understanding of her family and her place in it.  She
_     accepted it matter-of-factly. So whatever unjustified
_     hostility she may have had against you, it was NOT caused
_     by SUPPRESSED, UNCONSCIOUS feelings about your greater
_     abilities. 
 
The phrase "suppressed, unconscious feelings" is an oxymoron.
What's unconscious is not felt. Ask your anesthesiologist.
Margrit's statement, quoted by you that I had always been much
more gifted than she, that I had "remarkable abilities that
she could never hope to match," is the most eloquent declaration
of inferiority conceivable.  It's absurd to cite that sentiment
of Margrit's and then argue in the same paragraph that she had
no feelings of inferiority.

_     What I find disturbing about your reaction
_     is that you don't leave room for the possibility
_     that Margrit may have been right about SOME of
_     these matters and you might have been wrong. 
_     You know, a wise and neutral observer COULD
_     THEORETICALLY arrive at such a conclusion,
_     even if you don't see it that way yourself. 
_     I think in evaluating one's own beliefs and
_     actions, one needs to leave open the possibility
_     that one might be shading reality. 

Please write more clearly. My "reaction" to what, when and where?
The three letters on which our discussion is based were written
in 1991. These letters address complaints of Margrit among others,
that thirty-four to twenty-nine years earlier, during the years 1957
through 1962, I had prevented her forming "a relationship" to Klemens.
My "reaction" to that complaint, as expressed in my letter, was that
I had no such memory, that the past was inaccessible. I didn't know
then, and I don't know now, why the "relationship" which she coveted
did not arise. (Perhaps it was she whose capacities for such a
"relationship" were lacking - cf Georgette Fleischer, William Nease,
Hannah Atkinson, each of them also was party to a relationship of limited
success.) My attempt in those three letters was to shift the discussion
from the past to the present and to show Margrit the present, immediate
opportunities for the longed-for relationships by becoming a member
of the family of the child to whom she wished to be closer.
Those three letters and our subsequent correspondence document the
circumstance that at least from 1991 to Margrit's death, and probably
for years prior to 1991, I consciously afforded Margrit opportunities
to build the relationships she coveted, opportunities of which she
was unable to avail herself, opportunities that she adamantly and
consistent rejected, - to the fatal end.  Arguably Margrit's shifting
the blame on me was a maneuvre with which she maintained her own
self-esteem.
 
_     I read your words carefully yesterday, and I fully
_     understood that you and / or Klemens and Laura and
_     Margaret believed that it was important that the children
_     not be left in the sole charge of Margrit because this
_     might lead to harm.  Of course, as loving and responsible
_     adults, it was your wish and obligation to protect the children,
_     so you did the best you could.  Whether your fears about
_     Margrit's competence and responsibility were justified
_     (whether a competent, well-meaning, "disinterested" observer
_     would have found reason to doubt Margrit's competence and
_     responsibility) I can't say.  For myself, I was surprised
_     to hear about this dispute.  I never got the impression
_     during the brief periods I spent with Margrit, that I should
_     be worried about leaving a child in her care (until
_     her last years when she noticed herself that she was
_     losing her memory, and her actions became scatterbrained,
_     but I saw no signs of that 10 or 20 years ago).  You all,
_     who interacted with Margrit much more than I did, were
_     certainly in a better position to know.  Nonetheless I
_     don't know what to make of your 'I'm right, whoever
_     challenges my views is wrong, and that's all there is
_     to it' way of thinking. 

Please take another look at the letter in which I responded to
Margrit's complaint that she was not trusted. I tried to suggest
to her that she could earn the trust which she sought, by conforming
to the expectations of other family members. Yet she did the
opposite, demonstratively taking risks with her own safety and
health. As some are compulsive drinkers or compulsive gamblers,
so Margrit was a compulsive risk taker. She insisted on driving
a miniature sports car with an unprotected soft canvas roof. She
insisted on overloading it so that her view of the highway was
blocked. She insisted on leaving in the late afternoon and
driving in the dark. The various Konnarock neighbors who
witnessed her conduct were appalled by what they observed.
Margrit insisted, even after having fallen twice, breaking
first her shoulder and then her wrist, on traversing stairs
with clothes in both arms, disdaining use of the hand rails.
Arguably she died as a result of the risks she took with that
ill fated cruise from which she returned deathly sick into
an apartment where she had insisted on living by herself. She
customarily and demonstratively ate food that was spoiled to
show that it would not make her sick. She once explicitly invited
me to take risks with her trust, assuring me that she didn't care
if the money was lost.  Margrit was incapable of controlling
her risk taking, and she cultivated a circle of friends who
applauded the dare-devil in her and admired her for her bravado. 
Of course she would have insisted that she was "more careful"
with children, but such flexibility in risk taking, even if it
were plausible, will not be persuasive to the anxious parent
who has witnessed her disdain of caution and whose child she
then demands to borrow.
 
_     You grasp completely that Margrit might have harbored
_     hostility that colored her attitudes and opinions about you. 
_     And you grasp that my friendship for Margrit, and perhaps
_     identification with her situation, might color my appraisal
_     of what you do and say.  But I detect no space in your mind
_     at all for the possibility that your own hostility to Margrit
_     has been coloring your appraisal of her abilities and actions. 
_     I know you are not conscious of such hostility within yourself,
_     but that doesn't mean it's not there, and while you can't
_     conjure what's not conscious, it is unwise to ignore the
_     possiblity that it exists.  How is one supposed to take
_     into account possible feelings, beliefs, motives that one
_     is unaware of?   By reminding onesself that one's
_     self-understanding is imperfect; that assertions by others
_     that seem absurd on their face, probably deserve a second
_     and third look, especially when it would be more comfortable
_     for us to dismiss them out of hand.

That concluding paragraph relies on two spurious arguments.  You
ignore the complex meaning of the word "hostility."  With respect
to Margrit, I am painfully aware of how it applies to me. I do
not deny, and I have never denied its applicability. Fundamentally
to the Darwinian biologist hostility is integral to individual
existence. Each of us requires his or her own physical and spiritual
territory. There is unavoidable competition for scarce resources.
The competition between Margrit and myself was intellectual and
emotional. I could not cede to her understanding and interpretation
of our respective individual existences, of human nature, of history,
of society, of politics, of science, of "philosophy" without abandoning
my "self". One mitigates this facet of hostility by protecting the
freedom of the other individual to be him or herself.

In the course of my writing - letters, essays, novels, - I become more
and more aware that description and judgment are inseparable, that
to presume to describe a person like Margrit is unavoidably to pass
judgment on her, and to pass judgment, of course, is to do her injustice.
I purport to avoid this aspect of hostility with dialectic, by speaking
out of both sides of my mouth, by contradicting myself. For Margrit's
obituary I consciously denominated recklessness as courage, bumper
sticker righteousness as political idealism, and frivolous gregariousness
as catholic love of humanity. The denial of universal and ubiquitous
hostility is a form of idealization. Arguably my readiness, as in this
letter, to display both sides of the coin is a species of de-idealization,
and must also be denominated hostility.

Finally, there's the hostility of the businessman, who seeks his own
advantage to the detriment of his patient, client or customer, which
is also highly pertinent in my relationship to Margrit. In a previous
letter, you've as much as insinuated that I was preparing to steal
Margrit's money when I proposed to provide a retirement community
and a potential nursing home for Margrit at 174 School Street, intending
thereby to preserve also the funds in the Meyer Family Trust No. 2,
dated 2-20-90, which Margrit had set up for the primary purpose as
defined in the Trust of subsidizing any needy lineal descendant
of Heinz Meyer. I would plead guilty to grand larceny and theft,
except for the fact that Margrit: 1) had consented to the Trust,
2) never requested that it be dissolved, 3) received from the Trust
every cent for which she asked, - and more. Your recommendation,
if I understood you correctly, was that I should give her the money,
let her "invest" it or spend it as she liked, and then once the 
money had run out, let her rot in a nursing home or a gutter, on the
premise that her misery was her own doing, and no longer a
responsibility of mine. I disagree. I plead Genesis 4:9. I AM my
sister's keeper, and no one, not even she herself can deny me
this privilege and relieve me of this obligation.

_                                             Nonetheless I
_     don't know what to make of your 'I'm right, whoever
_     challenges my views is wrong, and that's all there is
_     to it' way of thinking. 

I've never said, "I'm right." I consistently say "I'm wrong."
Railing against me isn't going to get you anywhere. My rightness
is not righteousness. My rightness is rhetorical only. Your
problem is that you confuse rhetoric with existence. 

_                                   How is one supposed to take
_     into account possible feelings, beliefs, motives that one
_     is unaware of?   By reminding onesself that one's
_     self-understanding is imperfect; that assertions by others
_     that seem absurd on their face, probably deserve a second
_     and third look, especially when it would be more comfortable
_     for us to dismiss them out of hand.

Again, you confuse rhetoric with existence. The circumstance
that my rhetoric is unassailable by you is trivial and shouldn't
cost you any sleep. My existence is indefensible, - like that
of everyone else.

When you berate me for my alleged failure to acknowledge that I
might be wrong, you ignore my repeated assertions that I believe
the existence of myself and of each other human being inevitably
makes one guilty and unavoidably entails ones being in the wrong.
I've supported my belief with specific references to Anaximander's,
to Isaiah's and to Kierkegaard's writings. But that confession of
guilt isn't enough for you and Margrit. Margrit would have
stigmatized it as "sophistry". You and Margrit need me to be guilty,
to be in the wrong, in a very especial and particular way:
you need me to be wrong in order that YOU may be in the right.
I'm pleased to oblige.

Jochen