Dear Marion,

After 4 hours of supplementary sleep, in addition to the
obligatory correction of typographical errors, with which
you won't need help, I offer an emendation of my references to
Faust. I failed to point out the subtle distinction between the
"Prologue" (VorWORT) im Himmel - which is only talk, chit-chat,
however divine, and the "VorSPIEL" (prelude) auf dem Theater,
where things get DONE. (cf Im Anfang war die Tat.)

In consequence of our discussion, I would like to suggest that
we redefine "fact" as such theory which is sufficiently reliable 
that it serves to facilitate our existence and survival in a world
that is otherwise incomprehensible to us. Even by this definition
we are sometimes unsure whether the validity of a given theory
rises to the level of fact on which we may rely.

The writings of both Lessing and Kierkegaard, I would like to
interpret as facets of the cultural transformations that suffused
the 18th and 19th centuries with the redefinition of human thought,
specifically the redefinition of religious experience. Lessing's
accomplishment was to replace religious orthodoxy with religious
tolerance as the canonical standard of at least "Western" societies.
Kierkegaard's achievement, far more nebulous, was to define a realm
of personal, individual subjectivity in a progressively industrialized
world, of which all members, from the proletarian industrial serf
to the effete academician, are reduced to interchangeable monads in
a population relentlessly forced into modularity, where the votes
of all are equivalent, and one size of spirit must fit all, if only
because one size is the only one available.

Jochen