Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter, and thank you especially for
taking seriously the ideas with which I experimented in
Chapter 52. Your comments provide me with an opportunity to
review the topics which have recently preoccupied me. 

Not spring, but in the age of global warming, it appears
that summer is here. Time to think about air-conditioning
rather than heating. Nonetheless, I thank you for your advice
to consider switching to a gas-fired boiler. I shall certainly
keep it in mind.  My project would be not to remove the existing
oil-fired boiler, but to connect a gas-fired boiler in parallel
to the existing installation. If I had the physical strength,
I could do it all myself; but this morning at least, I feel in my
joints every single one of the 981 months of my earthly existence,
and would prefer not to venture into a new large construction
project, especially since Nantucket is still looming.  I've also
concluded that my fantasies about electrically heated clothing 
are faulty, inasmuch as all that's needed for comfort in very
cold weather is warm clothing. Ask the Eskimos.

So far as my writing is concerned, I plead that it's all
experimental, and that I don't really know what I'm doing.  I'm
much appreciative of your criticism, since it helps to reorganize
the subconscious workshop in which, for better or worse, my
writing takes shape. Given the circumstance that we have detective
stories, love stories, horror stories, historical novels, pedagogic
novels (Bildungsromane), science fiction, psychological novels, and
novels of social and political criticism, - not necessarily a
complete list, - I was exploring the question whether, how, and to
what extent, ideas themselves might serve as the framework of
fiction. All this in the context of my belated recognition that it
is language and words which are at the root of and determine the
trajectories of our thoughts. Since language is not declaration but
communication, it occurred to me that ideas are best elucidated and
can only be expressed adequatelyin dialogue. Indeed, dialogue, 
Auseinandersetzung, is the process by which language, and hence ideas, 
are generated.  I agree that the personages engaging in the discussions
of Chapter 52 are too bland. If I have the opportunity, I will rewrite 
these conversations in the framework of academic controversy. Perhaps 
they will then be more compelling.

What I did not understand sixty three years ago, when I began my
rumination about abstractions, and what I believe I understand now,
is that the "successful" conclusion of theoretical investigations
can not be a verbal or mathematical formula which defines either
epistemologic or ethical truth. Rather that conclusion proves to be
the intellectual - if not indeed spiritual - transparency of dogmatic
statements which makes it possible to look through them - and beyond
them - to a compelling experience (Erleben) which is not amenable to
verbal summary, but finds its most adequate expression in the dialectic
of "either - or" if not indeed "neither - nor". Thus I can not (any
longer) subscribe to Kierkegaard's contention that "Subjectivity is the
Truth." This notion has only an heuristic function, which it fulfills
in demonstrating that "Objectivity is NOT the Truth."  Consequently one
has no choice but to conclude that neither subjectivity nor objectivity
is the Truth, or that both subjectivity and objectivity are the Truth,
depending on whether ones preference is to find the glass half full or
half empty.

From the absence from your letter of clinical reportage, I infer, I hope
correctly, that you have been reasonably well. Please keep me informed
of any (serious) problems, and stay well.

Jochen