Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter, for your account of Thanksgiving
at the Farm, and for letting me celebrate with you albeit in a
vicarious manner. Vicariousness has its undeniable advantages.
Thank you especially for your comments on my comments.
Interestingly, from the two examples which you cite, one
might reasonably infer that I was a champion of bank robbers
and such, while at the same time a prosecutor of even the most
humane  euthanasia. The contradiction, however, is not mine.
It's implicit your challenge, which reflects, on the one hand, the
comfort you derive from the law's protection against evildoers, 
and on the other hand your chagrin at the law's interference
with conduct that you deem virtuous. Your implicit need for
subjective "interpretation" of the law to achieve "substantive
justice", corroborates my intuition of the law's nullity.

The problem is by no means novel. You may or may not be familiar
with the anecdote which, for me at least, serves as the clue that
unlocks the mysteries of the mind of Immanuel Kant. In the context
of Kant's assertion with his "categorical imperative" of absolute
adherence to the moral law, founded on "truth" and buttressed with
the unconditional prohibition against "lying", Kant was challeanged
with the question: Pursued by an enemy intent on murdering him (or
her), your best friend has sought refuge and hidden herself or
himself in your apartement. There is a knock on the door. It's the
enemy asking: Where's she hiding. You smile blandly, and looking
into the enemy's eyes, you say: "How should I know?" You're lying,
and according to Kant a lie is never permissible, even when
addressed to a murderous enemy to protect the life of your best friend.
Moses Mendelssohn had the good sense to tell Kant he was crazy.
But neither at the time, nor in the centuries since, has anyone
been able to draw the line between lying that is not good and lying
that is good, between lying that is bad and lying that is not bad.
I think of the brave foster parents who lied to protect Niko.  I ask
myself what would I do, if tonight Julian Assange knocked on the front
door at 174 School Street, and asked if there were an empty closet for
him. It would be an agonizing situation, but I think I know the answer.

As usual, I'm tempted to think further, - perhaps to go off the deep
end, - in an attempt to rationalize and hence to unify the world which
we experience - die Welt unseres Erlebens. I understand the structure
and the dynamics of the symbols with which we humans communicate and
which become essential ingredients of our thought, as the key which
unlocks the secrets both of knowledge and of action, the key that fits
the locks both of the closet of epistemology and the closet of ethics.
If one defines knowledge as the facility of orienting and adapting
to the world in which we find ourselves, and if one defines ethics,
as the discipline that instructs us, by means of precepts, imperatives,
laws, about what we must and must not do, then both in the realms
of science and of law, one discovers the concepts with which we 
represent "reality", the words with which we communicate and construct
the community that is the basis of our existence, - one discovers that
these symbolic concepts - or conceptual symbols - constitute an 
insurmountable barrier to the individual experience of reality, a fence
through which we can find no avenue of escape, a wall that imprisons us.
The difference between you and me: you find the jail a rather comfy
place to inhabit; while I keep making myself ridiculous by wanting,
trying to get out.

Jochen