Letter to Hans Jonas, 1966

Zandahar Lodge, Manchester . Vermont,

~Rear Hens: Jovas
‘Tars- ayvbter is an experiment, and I have chosen you as ny

guinea pig. The purpose is to continue our dialogue which started
yeers ago when I first had read your immortality paper, Or was it
even earlier when you showed me in 59 the draft of your Practical
Uses of Theory? Anyhow over these past years we both found it
helpful to show each other our mudpies, Not that we always re-
Sponded with unreserved applause. For this to happen our fundg~
mentel positions are - shall I say* still - too different. But
they lie in a productive distanee from one snother - near enough
for mutual. understanding, far endien for challenging question-
ing. This is so because our convictions are not dogmatically
frozen, Using traditional labels, I see in you an "ontological
monist", but one who struggles toward that position rather than
One who spesks of it ex cathedra, And my clinging to"existential
dualism" springs from intellectual perplexity rather than from
self-satisfied preference, But the most productive stimulys in
our exchange is that we do not just take a sympathetic interest
in each other's concerns, but that our impulse is identical: to

_ discover meaning where on the surface none seems t be, and to
discover such meaning first for our own sake, even if also

others may benefit efterwards. In a word, what unites us is 4

/ religious - for more than one reason I do not say: theological _

concern.

Now let me confess to you that, over the last two years,

all my {ntellectual efforts nave been devoted to this task, even

if the only visible fruit of my lsbors is the little piece written

for the Bloch Festsenrift. It is unlikely that T would have

chosen this particujar "je4sure time” activity, head I not been

involved in these issues much longer, in fact, all my life. It

is no exaggeration to say thet, from the time of my adolescence,

nothing else has truly interested me. Not by chance do I count

among my friends - the sequence is purely chronological - Tillich,

Ruestow, Mannheim, Bloch, and last put not least yourself. You

may object that my choice of profession speaks against this claim.

Still, if not some of my earlier writings, my last pook boek—

certainly gives me aWaye Even in my economic and sociological

work, what held my interest through four decades was the tfoun-

wmnaole
dations". And what} me popular in Kiel and Frankfurt was, rather

than my departmental

work, the "Kindergottesdienst; as my late

companthon Fritz Burchardt used to call the weekly meetings with

a selected group of students, in which Karl Barth, Dreigroschen-

oper, or the emancipation of women took precedence over Schum-

peter's theory of interest. A certain intellec ta. agility has

helped me to conceal

my heresy from my professional colleagues 5

put a perspicacious fellow like Kenneth Boulding easily found

me oute

So what I have tried to do in recent months hes peen to shed

a mask and to talk turkey, while there is still time. But the

result has so fer most disappointing. Wot thet I lack ideas -

some of them secm to

find the proper"form

me even bright ones - put I simply cannot
" to organize my thoughts in such a way get.

nu

that they become commnicable. Is it the immensity of the task?
Is it lack of clarity in my mind? Is it simply my dtietantic in-
compedence which blocks articulation? All this, no doubt, and
more of the kind. But in recent days it dawned upon me that per-
haps there is a meaning in this failure. You will laugh when I
tell you the "Anlass" to, suspiodon. Of all things, it was the
reading of Maurice Friedman! sbook.

Let me say in passing that, though not really a good book,
it is much better than I had expected and than Aiken's stupid
review indicates, Friedman barks up the right tree though the
bark is more noisy than revealing. He is for ever ruined by his
plind admiration for Buber. You know my strong reservations to
Buber's work and person - in the elemental sphere the two are, +
alas, x inseparable, because "Du gleichst dem Geist den Du begreifst"”.
And when Buber-Friedman explain Job's final submission to Jahweh as
the consequence of Job having achieved his ultimate aim, namely of
establishing a dialogue with God, Iwas for a change reminded of
a Jewish joke. Levi comes home excitedly, shouting “The King has
talked to me"! "What did he say! asks his wife. "Get out of the
way, you dirty Jew"!

And yet, this heavily overworked notion of the"dialogue"” gave
me a clue to my own troubles. Probably 1 have not resenel Outs Ag
could commnicate soe wa anonymous public. Nor will the monologue
of writing down my free associations make a whole out of the scattered

if, myself to
parts, But perhaps something will jeriie I ad ress /one real person.

This may transform the abstract message into a conerete encounter,

while the privacy of my utterances is preserved. It will give a

~4-

“Be-witt-eive a focus to my thoughts without forcing them pre-
maturely into a systematic order, I can present them in the
tentative and loose form beyond which I have not yet progressed,
and I can myself express doubts and point to gaps, being author
and critic at the same time. In a word, I can spesk “ins Unreine”.

Now I have told you the purpose of this letter, and the role
I have assigned to you as reader. No obligation to respond falls
on you though, needless to say, any response will be more than
welcome. But if I suecesed in loosening my tongue by speaking,
nay,Stammering and stuttering, with you as my imagined listener
you have discharged, by your very existence, a function of cardi-
nal import to me,

My preliminary apologies are not over. Not only do I use
you as a "means"(though I hope not only as a means), but I cannot
help approaching my subject in 9 most cavalier fashion. I am con-
sciously erecting a structure over an epistemologicaljand psycho-
logical abyss. I am trying to find words for a fundamental inner
experience. Thus I shall speak about what is ultimately ineffable,
conceptualizing what precedes thought. And in claiming more than
subjective validity for such experience, I know full well that by
being channeled through the mind and, in particular, my mind , what
is experienced will be distorted by the limitations and deformations
of the receptacle. And yet I simply leap over these chasms, finding
dubious consolation in the fact that better mon on my side of the
fence - from Paseal to Camus ~ could not @i do otherwise. And my
"opponents! who concern themselves with "essence" rather than with
"exiatence! have to contend with no less worrisome paradoxes. So

I leap.

I. The Primary Experience - Die Urerfahrung.

SOLITARII IN MUNDO CONJURAMUS # ERGO SUMUS.
We are alone in the world but we bend together -
Onty this temvise: validatfomesf our -bedmety viene,

I am not quite happy about this formula because, as every
attempt at"formulating"it reduces the fullness of the encounter.

Moreover, it suppresses altogether one central mode of experience /

for which a secular term has still to be coined: what in religious

w

5
language is called "grace", pointing to experiences that are - or

are not - "received" without our being able to do anything but
being "prepared" for them. I shall m say more about this later,
yet it is no accident that I do not begin there.

Let me comment on the three parts of the formule in succession.

1. We are alone in the world. It is essential to see that this is

no “atheistic” statement, at least so long as we do not prejudge
the issue by insisting on the notion of a God who is defined by
"Providence" and Justice, who "loves" Man and will never forsake
him. This God is sndoed) sn Sithropomorshtc creation, and though
the Bible - especially the New Testament - shows many traces of
this nursery product, He is not the God who speaks to Job, nor
the God to whom Jesus cries out on the cross, The profundity of
the story of Job shows in God himself rejecting any such senti-
mental image, and not only by what he explicitly says about Him-
self. In chiding at the endy Job's friends for their proclamations
of Theodicy, and in declaring that Job,,in proclaiming cosmic in-
Justice, has spoken "truth of me" 5 He aefines Himself as omi-

potent force, Bei

above any Ought

“b=

As such modern Man cannot deny Him. The relevance of the
Book of Job for us is its utter realism. Whatever our response

may be to the a-moral indifference of the cosmic forces, and we

shall see that Man's very validation as Man depends on the nature
ee
of thas response, the supre-human power of these forces remains

a primary detum of our experience + The world and Man's fate in

anaemia

i isely as Job describes it - with the exception of the
happy ehding which is part of the old folk tale, and not of the
drama proper. ‘True, this is a random, not an evil world, end the
odds are not necessarily against Man. Occasionally the "galloping
messengers of the king" may come in time, but we must not trust
in their ever arriving, And there is no technological utopia
which covld free us from the rule of these cosmic forces. Even
if one day we succeed™in"creating life", ail that we can achieve
will be a new combination of given elements and a rechanneling
of the forces that act upon theild.,

So long as we remain aware that all conceivable "control"
cannot "tame" forces, it is a matter of choice whether we want
to"dignify" what is beyond our own power with a name hallowed
put also corrupted by tradition. I am inclined to think that
a moratorium placed on the use of the word "God" may be good
for our intellectual and emotional health. It will perhaps free
us from the temptation of kneeling before an anthropomorphic idol,
and will help us to walk, in the knowledge of our limitations,
erect - what Bloch calls eccomplishing "den AMREXAHREZHH auf-

rechten Geng."

~To

And yet I must be careful not to fall with this very first

step into dogmatism, There have been men and women in every age,
sophisticated end simple-minded ones, who have spoken of the im-
mediate experience of a God of Justice, Mercy and Love. How. can
I argue my case before them? I cannot, because no arguments can
destrpy feelings of evidence, Not having experienced such evi-
dence myself I cannot denounce it as self-deeeption. Thus from
the outset a doubt hovers over my most fundamental assertion.
However, the "believers" themselves are no better off. Accepting
the testimony of the greatest among them, the evidence of "Dear"
God does not seem to be a firm possession of the recipient.
As Augustine or Imther describe it, falling out of the state of
evidence (entering which ig taken as the highest gift of Grace)
is as torturous an experience as it is recurrent. Which one is
then the true experience? Is the beatific tonus of life in the
knowledge of the Redeemer worthier of trust than the intuition
of being alone, not to say the despair of feeling condemned for
eternity?

We see#i moet with this very same impasse again and again,
whenever decisions must be taken while the "evidences" - psycho-
logical, moral, political - conflict. On the level of "knowledge"
such conflicts cannot be compromised, The degree to which recon-
ciliation can be accomplished on the level of "action" measures
the strength of communal bonds. But I am running ahead. Here
no more needs, soknowleagea than that the "theological" decision
is unarguable, and all we can do is to respect one another's

evidences,

«B=
Not all theological disputes need end in a draw. I strongly
protest against the fashion to substitute for the diagnostte state-

ment that we alone, the nostagic complaint that we are "exiled"

or "abandoned", ert ke cannot have it both ways, In speaking of
exile and abandonment, we point to a lost home and a guardian that
has forsaken us - in a word, we restore en image of a transcendent
reality which, in the same breath, we expose as our own invention.
The psychological roots of such contradiction in modern Western
Many can easily be traced to his Judaeo-Christian heritage. But
as again the Book of Job demonstrates, as does the ery of the
dying Jesus, the experience of an indifferent Universe has its
roots in that very tradition, not to mention the Moira of Greek
tragedy. Difficult as it may be for us to be alone, nothing is
gained by pretending that others were not.

No better is the case of the “Death of God" theologians, if
they mean what they say which not all of homeo, To be dead now,
God - the Christian God - must have been alive some time in the
past. This places those self-styled "radical" theologians along-
side with the "exiles" and "abandoned", Yet all that radical
eritics of Theology can responsibly maintain is that they do not
find the Christien God in the world they encounter. It is they
who have "died" to their childhood beliefs. But to proclaim that
God has "died" or even only "withdrawn, or is "eclipsed", ist tho-
logical speculation rather than primary experience. [tats leads
us finally to what Camus has denounced as the Taitabondiial es-
cape", illustrated on Kierkegaard or Jaspers. In full recognition

of the “absurd . . . born of the confrontation between the human

~9~

need and the unreasonable silence

.« . . they deify

what crushes them and find reason for hope in whet impoyerishes
them". (Sisyphus, pp.21, 24). Paradigmatic for this attitude

is a quotation from Jaspers: "Does not the failure (viz. of the
Universeto respond to Man) reveal beyond any possible explanation
and interpretation, not the absence put the existence of trans-
ee And to dispel any doubt that there is no unconquerable
Dualism sepéreting Man snd World, Jaspers defines that existence
as "the unthinkable unity of the general and the particular”
(quoted from Sisyphus, p. 24-5). Since in the wake of Kierke-
gard the paradox is elevated to the bearer of ultimate truth,

no logieal argument can prevail against this version of my favor-
ite joke that "God does not talk to 4 liar", But it is to this
kind of reasoning that I would apply Laplace’ retort to Napoleon:
Sire, je n'ai vas besoin de cette nyvothese. I put this forth

as an existential assertion against a Cosmodicy purchased at the
price of standing experience on its head.

I sald it before but it needs wemm repeating: the Universe

41. Were it evil, »e=t in the clutches

human." Lo watch such a cosmic KPaaERaKA spectacldmi ght cause un-
suf frable pain. And yet the spectacle would be performed for Man
and with him as chief protagonist. There would be Providence, even
if not Justice or Love, and Man could have trust in his fate however
perverted. But whet puts terror in Paseal's heart - the first one
who founds words for the primary experience of the World's XHAXREX

indifferenee- is the contemplation of those infinite spaces " of

-10-

which I know nothing and- the crucial insight - which know &&
nothing of me". This ghes beyond what Job has to bear. Job is
in the hands of a God who aces not “gare! 2fO, him but who knows
of him, speaks to him, and in a strange way even justifies him.
Contrariwise our encounter is with anonymous forces and its mode
is not dissimilar with the push and pull as which Newtonian
Physies deseribes the relations among mechanical entities. Ele-
mental as these forees are since they bring us to life, sustain
us for a while and kill us in the end, we cannot truly "fear"
them in the manner in which the Bible speaks of the Fear of the

Lerd, Though they stand for Being, theirs is an “alien’ ‘Being -

the breaking open of an ultimate Dualism".

What I have said so far assigns to the; cosmte forees) a role

beyond good and evil. But these very same forees Have irretrie-

vably Sonbonic oO ZENMAMRNK REA XEN RAMANA SRERNAN TRNAS ONSESIRAUS

ph + te Leg

Man to | "Death, and if these is validity in eam Entropy Law yhis

fa mecty don ysontonse includes all"strueture! organic and tnevgente. This

poses the most perplexing existential problem: how to reconcile
Se

, the irreversibility of the tendency toward “maximum disorder"

with true Andifference on the part of the World toward Man's

%

Mp 3 j. % Cf Tbs
endeavors? ery TR tof sary ae

Agnostic Existentialism, having renounced belief in Im-

mont ay in whetever form, has been unable to overcome - &

oa

dilemma. Take again Camus for whom, with transcendence fore-

closed, Life is the ultimate value, a value which is bound to

inerease as the limits on Life recede. Or, paraphrasing

Nietzsche he might say: What Life strives for is "deep eter-

Acta aP ice
/

-ll~-
“a
‘nity. Camus goes still further, (Sisyphus p. 45): "What counts
is not the best living but the most living", and a little later:

"there can never be any substitute for twenty years of life and

experience"(p.47) He does not feel quite comfortable with such
a "vulgar" standard of pure quantity, amd tries to soften the
plow by adding to quantity some qualitative meaning (p.46).But

is the Suprene | ‘good, of

what Z# matters is something else.

Death becomes the supreme evil. The Universe is then no longer

tghlent" put in ordaining the EXHXKHAXH finiteness of all creation
it

aks wEte, a @ digboliqvengesnce, The ultimate datum of our

axperienee is no longer the “absurd " indifference of the world
\ put its malevolence.

We must not try to attack this contradiction with "logic",
nor should we gloat over another "paradox". I believe that the
problém is genuine, and that it voints to a dimension in our
anticipating the Bxperience of Death which modern Existentialisnx
AREXNAXHLUXKXBURGAKX has failed to grasp. Light will fall on this

when we now proceed to the second part of my formula.

2. But_we band together, These words fall badly short of what

they are to imply. The Latin term "conjurare" rehders more
fully the multiplicity of connotations, some of which I will try
to detail.

Qnee more the modern Existentialists are helpful guides,

For! them _ the response of Man finding himself alone is "Rebellion".
And it is again Camus who has penetrated most deeply into the
complexities of the rebellious attitude. To understand him fully

one mast be aware of the evolution which his thinking underwent.

-1Z-
In his original vision, which differs little from that of Hei-
degger's Sein und Zeit or from Sartre's L'Etre et le Neant, Man
is alone not only in confronting the Universe, but also among
his own kind. Rebellion then takes the form of defying the fate
which the absurdity of the World holds in stock for him, in resist-

pipanie

2
ing the temptation to anticipate the cosmic Death sentence by com-

mitting suicide. Such rebellion "is not aspiration, for it is
devoid of hope." It is "the certainty of a crushing fate, with-
out the resignation that ought to accompany it." (Sisyphus, ».40)
"Tt is essential to die unreconciled and not of one's own free
will". (p.41) In a curious footnote (p. 77)referring to Mal-
raux's work, Camus admits that "the social question’... cannot

pe avoided by absurd thought"...Onme must, however, limit oneself",
But most probably it was not lack of space or time which then
prevented Camus from discussing the "social question. Like his
hero Sisyphus he had eyes only for the gods above and for the
void which had swallowed them.

It was an historical event - the German oceupa#ion of France-
which turned his gaze in the "horizontal" direction. His problem
now becomes, not whether to repudiate oneself by suicide, but
whether to repudiate others by murder. And murder - this is the
burden of L'Homme Revolté - is the inevitable result if Men,
finding God's throne empty , usurps it tor himself. Be he the
Grand Inquisitor, the Superman or the Commissar, they all act

in the place of a God who "eares", And - a terrible dialectic -

insisting on the unadulterated virtue of their principles they
arrogate to themselves the nihilistic freedom that “kills what

ye neh Aikbeng ben, clone onote
z y

al3=

remains of God in the principles themselves." (The Rebel, p.215.)
fave
However, while aware of this danger, the Rebel does not place
f 6
himself at the service of the status quo and its injustices, He

knows that "those who find no rest in God or in history are con-

flan &

ey ey

demned to live .... for the huiiiliated” (p.271) But they must do
so within"limits” set as strictly as those which Nemesis has set
to the motion of the sun (263). "Rebellion is in no way the demand
for total freedom ... the freedom to kill is not compatible with
the motives of rebellion (241). And a strange echo of old Jewish

wisdom: “if one single human being is missing in the world of 5

fraternity then this world is immediately depopulated" (249) / © wee

I confess thet I know of no other proclamation of Man's re-
sponse to living in a post-Christian and post-Merxian climate ~
without God or History to fall back upon ~ which equally satisfies
‘iy own Instincts. But Rebellion thus understood is a most uncom-
fortable posture to assume, The Rebell"cannot ... absolutely
elaim not to kill or lie, without rehouneing his rebellion and
accepting, onee and for all, evil and murder. Bug nor can he
agree to kill and lie, since the inverse reasoning which would
justify mrder and violence would also destroy the reasons for
his insurrection. Thus the re¥el ean never find peace ".

Camus knows no answer which would once and for all conquer
this dilemma, and certainly none on which an institutional
solution could be built. This is brought home to us even more
clearly when we turn to Dr,Roux, the tired hero of La P este,
in whose image Camus conceived what was later to find philosophical

,
expression in L'Homme Revolte. On the surface Dr.Roux's task seems

-14-

unequivocgl., As a medical doctor caught up in a plague, he id
called upon to "heal". And he accepts the call unflingingly,
while painfully aware of his inadequacy in the face of an over-
whelming catastrophe, But it is not"victory" he is fighting
for, and even the final fading away of the plague does not de-
ceive nim, kinize listening to cries of joy rising from the town,
"Rieux remembered that such joy is always imperiled ...... +het
that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for goodec.ee-
and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and en-
lightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send
them fortito die in a happy city." These are the last words

of the book, and they Bet once more the human condition.
But how to meet it - a X##@H lesson learnt " in a time of pesti-
lence'-Rieux tells us in the preceding paragraph," He knew that
the tale he had to tell could never be one of final uvictory.
It could only be the record of what had to be done, and what
assuredly would have to be done again in the never ending fight
against terror and its relentless onslaughts.....by all who ....
strive to be healers."

"banding together" as our response to being alone. The Latin
term happily blends the elements of banding oneself with an
oath, and of a conspiracy aiming at a positive goal. It lacks
the aura of resentfhl reaction to what is negative, an aura
which Cams tekes so much pain to remove from his notion of
Rebellion. In a word, it turns our gaze toward that for which ,

rather than that_against which, we are to struggle. But perhaps

-15=

I place too much of a personal interpretation upon these words.
Therefore I hed better spell out the specifie "Yeses" and "Nos"
which I want them to convey.

There is a No to Job's submitting to the all too realistie
display of heavenly fireworks, Considering the many contro-
versial issues of textual interpretation little is gained by
pointing to the apparent contradiction between Sob recanting
his challenge and God, a moment later, justifying it. On the
other hand, Job's earlier reply to his friend Bildad: TILL I Dig TL
WILL NOT RENOUNCE MY INTEGRITY , and the most famous and also
most tampered with passage in the whole book: HE MAY SLAY ME,

I WILL NOT QUAVER, JI WILL DEFEND MY CONDUCT TO HIS FACE,
BORERAFRM portray the "erect posture" in which "Man by himself"
is to meet his fate. It is the NO which Ivan Keramazov echos
when he "turns his ticket in’- Knot because HaXKARWRAXXES
HARAE he does not acknowlege God, but because he refuses to
accept the world He created. Or Rieux's NO, who believes him-
self "to be on the right road - in fighting against creation as
he found att (The Plegue , 0.116.)

No less emphatic is the NO to secular Utopianism, as it
is embodied in the dominant political movements of our time:
Commnism and American Progressivism. The latter has recenthy
received a sort of religious sanction from the "Death of God"
theologians. ‘They are concerned with establishing "a new mood
of optimism in American culture .... This is .... a worldly
optimism I am defending", writes William Hamilton (Radical

ab
Theology and the Death 6f God, pp.168-9). It faces despair

-16-

not with the conviction that out of it God can bring hope, but
with the conviction that the human condition which created it

can be overcome, whether those conditions are poverty, diserimi-
nation, or mental illness", And climaxing his secular dithyramb,
this polar antagonist of Sisyphus proclaims that the new optimism
"Paces death not with the hope of immortality, but with the human
confidence that man may befriend death and live with it as a
possibility always alongside",

This brings us baci to the ;sentence of finiteness; AKXRaAE
which the cosmic forees. “nave passed upon us, and to what the in-
evitabilityof BeREN ei does to ou conjuratio, Earlier I shunned
the answer to the question ap coe the Universe truly perseveres
in silent indifference or, by killing us all off, speaks with
unmistakable malevolence. Now, if Hamilton is right and we can
hefriend" Death, the Universe reveals itself even in the absence
of "Dear" God as essentially benevolent}

fo speak about these matters is so painfully difficult, not
only because we approach the ultimate mystery of our existence
put also because we cannot while living experience Death "from
within", All our"knowledge" is vicarious: stemming from the "out-
side" experience of seeing others die, and from the anticipation
of our own death. In this situation all affirmations are suspect,
and contradictions in our speculations do not necessarily refute
whet is surmised.

One of these contradictions lies on the moral plane. Even
Camus for whom Life is the ultimate value accepts sacrificial

death - consenting to being murdered - especially when it is to

-17-

expiate murder we have inflicted on others, (The Rebel, p.249).

Dr. Rieux goes further. His imperative is not abstaining from taking
the life of others, but “defending” it. But when asked: against whom,
he can only confess: "I haven't a notion. Only I have never managed
to get used to seeing people die" (The Plague, p.117). On the sur-
fece a meagre reason - subjective-psychological rather than objective -
morals- but we shall see that implied in it is all a man can respon-
sibly state about his imperatives, without living beyond his experi-
ental eapitel. Yet what is relevant in the present context, Death

is for Camus never a "friend". Even for God, it might be better,

says Dr. Rieux,” if we refuse& to believe in Him and struggle with
all our might against death" (117-8), And though it is permitted,

in certain ttn

and even/circumstances, demanded, to give one's own life, it always
remains a "sacrifice".

From there it is a short step to where we can at least glimpse
at Death from within: in bioipating our own death. There are re-
ports of agnostics who all their life calmly lived with this anti-
cipation,and who are said to have passed over the threshold in
perfect serenity. This does not seem to be common experience.

Even when the imagined act of dying does not strike terror, anti-
cipation of the state of "non-being" makes most of us feel like
standing over an unfathomable abyss.

These experiences are genuine and eannot be conjuredbway with
rational or non-rational sppculations. And yet there is another
feeling tonus,much less conscious put permeating every act we
perform and every thought we think. It takes hold of us when we

try to imagine that, like Homer's Sisyphus, we were to succeed

NTN

in putting Death in chains and in thus removing the limit from

the "quantity" of our living days. Not only is such infinite
being no more fathomable than is non-being, bub we realize that,
with finiteness gone, living has been reduced to mere endurance,
There is no"hic and nunc” left, and our experiences have lost

the poignant savor of temporality and thus of a meaningful present
which bestows on them the modality of life. Far from being an in-
tellectual construction this assent to my finiteness as the price
of genuine living is rooted in my very center. But, and there is
the rub, it by no means conquers the terror which the anticipation
of non-being strikes in my heart - an inconsistency which I have

long given up to reconcile. On the contrary, I would be suspicious

if what we glimpse of non-life through a glass darkly were to fit

smoothly into the pattern of life itself.

Bet I think, and tits I revert to the open quesjion about
the neutrality of the Universe, the very inconsistency of such
cansenesbal “polate to an answer. On one level Death strikes us
indeed as the supreme H¥HX evil, and temporality as the curse of
creation. On another level it reveals itself as the one w event
which "orders" Life, and which cannot be imagined away from any-
thingwhich the solitary Kebelm affirms. We may cry out to the
Universe ror reconciliation, but it will not break its silence,
Befriending Death is a relapse into sentimentalizing the aloof-
ness of the cosmic forces, as abhorring Death is betrayel of
Life - another unconquerable Dualism.

But it is high time for me to turn from the NO to the X#ax

YES. What is there for solitary men to band together for? My

-19-

answer differs in a subtle but essential manner from that of

Ganmsand his hero. Maurice Friedman, who fully identifies
himself with this "Modern Job" puts his finger on the crucial
spot when he writes : Camus dislogical (!) rebel[Doc tor Rieux,
stends like Camus himself, for the meeting with concrete every-
dey reality, rather than for any particular ideology or point
of view" (Problematic Rebel p. 437). This is true and, if I
gee it rightly, reveals at one and the same time the superio-
rity and the inferiority of Camus! stand, as compared with
typical movements and political revolt. It is his greatness
that he shuns abstractions and #MMAUXEERAZ unadulterated princ-
iples, but deals with the concrete as he encounters it from
dey to day. But when the problem of improving "society" is
raised, he falls back on romantic visions of syndicalism -
revolutionary trade unionism operating "from bottom to top"-
or of the"country village where the living heart of things
and of men" still beats.(The Rebel, pp 264-5) He harbors
frank distrust of the trend of industrialism: "Industrial sae
society will only open the way to a new civilization by re-
storing to the worker the dignity of a creator" (p.241) The
"social question", understood as a problem of XHAEXEWHIAX
institutional reform rather than personal agap@ was never
met head on by Camus; it remained a "limit" set to individual
freedom by a trans-individual Nemesis.

The wisdom and compassion which effuse from Camus' writings

mast not be lost. Yet only enarchie illusion can fail to realize

xmB22 19A
that, as often as not, the attempt to meet the concrete here and now
is frustrated by the inertia if not enmity of the institutional en-
vironment. Delicate as the proper belance between the individual
and the collective isy and is bound to remain, as will presently
be shown, the goal of the_conjuratio set te this human era is
collective, And just beeause true goals are always concrete it is
to discovery and invention on this front that the solitary men of
this age must band together.

Can we define the feasible range of our conjuratio? If Jesus
had said: "YOU will always have suffering with you", we would not
want to contradict WARXMHASXYEZGN him from the distante of 2.000
years. But we must contradict his predictiony that we shall al-
ways have the poor with us. It was for the delineation of spheres
of life EHA such as these that, many years ago, Mex Brod pointed

to che distinction between "avoidable" and

-20-

"pnavoidable"” evil, incidegntally relating the fight against
avoidable evil to the fundamental teachings of Judaism. In-
deed this is the ever valid prescription for what men are to
pand together, because it is a flexibly rule. And such flexi-
bility cannot be dispensed with because what is unavoidable is
historically not fixed once and for all. Mass poverty was an
invincible enemy on the technological level of antiquity, as
a life span of three score and ten is a limit which medical
science and social hygiene have not yet #4 managed to break
on the large scale, But today a decent standard of living
is, at least in principle, within the reach of everypsociety,
however woefully most of them lag behind. And whether averege
man can live for a full century or more, is now a challenge to
sgeienece, and not the verdict of inexorable fate,

Placing these matters in the context of Man's existential
status helps us to take the convulfions our age for what
they are: symptoms of a historical mutation. At first Kia
sight this mutation appears as the product of modern science
and technology. But in looking below the surface we begin to
realize that scientific and technological progress are only
the major weapons in a global struggle for material and spir-
itual Emancipation, ‘This struggle, West and East, rich and
poor, power holders and subjects, women and children together
with men, the traditional vrotagonists of history. And though Tan
struggleg takes on many guises, they are all ve¥iants of the
one aim of casting off the fetters of past: the tyrannical rule

of a harsh nature, of often harsher human masters and, the topic

tte -21-

of this letter, of a still hersher BOSeUss, unappeatable verdict

of transcendent Gods. This anyhow is the meaning I read in the

unceasing political upheavels, domestic and international, in
_the process of world-wide economic development, in the so-calleal
sexual revolution coupled with a new education, in the probing
of the unconscious by science and art and, last but not least,
in the growing indifference of the masses in so Sees to organ-
ized religion, concomitant with the erosion of theology as exemp-
ified in Buber's or Schweitzer's mysticism, Tillich's Neo-Pan-
theism, or the radical Immanentism of Bonhoeffer and his du
disciples.
Western intellectuals can be grouped according to whether
they are with or against this struggle for emancipation, Almost
all"scientists" sre with it, very few"humenists" are. Even many

once open-minded critics of the past - from Schumpeter andOrtega

y Gasset to Toynbee and T.S.Eliot - joined the opposition when

Tocqueville's prediction proved true that the new order of
some

Oa
jervitude. They, right in semen blindly

mass

from millenia
to wiee “ven gavetns casure, But skeptical withdrawal or weak-
kneed return to the fold appears to me as a worse "trahison des
clercs" than the one exposed & Benda during the communist honey-
moon in the early twenties. This one deprives the struggle for

emancipation of what it is most in need of: intellectual and

moral guardians.

These comments make it clear that my own stand is with that
strugerby’ athe tercone the advances of science and techno-
legy which sustain the attack. This does not blind me to the
dangerous strein which the very speed of "progress" and social
transformation imposes on personality structure, human relations,
social and political organization. I share the fear that, in
its forward rush, the human race may actually destroy itself,
by irresponsibly tampering with the genetic process, by ruthless-
ly misusing the awsome potentialities of the new chemistry and

“manipulative” psychology, not to mention atomic and bacterio-
logical warfare, But Pandora's box has been opened, and not
only yesterday. It is another romantic delusion to indict

the twentieth century for our contemporary predicaments. Thoy
have their roots in centuries back, and the so-called liberat-
ors of mankind % all share in the responsibility - from Hamu-
rapi to Socrates.and Kant, from Wyckliff to Imther and Gandhi,
from Cromwell to the signers of the Declaration of Independence
and Kerl Marx, from Copernicus to Darwin and Freud, There is
no Arcadia to turn back to and, as I will argue below, if there
were we_ought to shun it, Certain ages in the past were more
successful in concealing misery, cYuelty and even bloodshed
from the observer. But,in the face of the horrors our genera=
tion had to witness, I believe that no historical era was as
conscious as is ours of the command that avoidable evil is to
be fought.

Such emohatic affirmation of the collective tasks of the

conjuratio ean after all be misunderstood as secular Utoplanism.

~23-

So let me say once more that, though I am second to no "radical"

silane a ia Co hi ka Cee tt

theologian in endorsing the institutionalized attack on poverty peed:

discrimination -endy—within—limits;-also-mental-diseasey I know
of aspects of the"buman condition" which even moral effort at
its most perfect cannot eradicate, Once again it is Death and
the temporality not only of ovr persons but of our accomplish-
ments, that throw¢ a dark shadow of doubt over all oub struggles
and goals. And the forewarnting of the entropic destiny of every-
thing that displays order and form raises the spectre of uni-
versal meaninglessness.

This rather than the dangers evoked by our moral defects
is the crucible of any conjuratio: to know that we and our

e/ lak
works will be d¥stroyed, and yet,to “maintain our integrity",

which most of us live most of the time. Nor am 1, or for that
matter any one else, capable of deciphering the hidden meaning.
And yet we live by the evidence that the "here and now" has a
meaning which metaphysical or theological rationalizationean
only obscure. Still, awareness of our true "limits" adds a
Sia shade to the coloring of every experience. Or, as I
said in my letter to Ernst Bloch: the melodies of our lives are
not played in C-major, Even the clarion call which summons us
to our conjuratio rises over a thorough-bass which sounds in

a minor key. In Bloch's own words: true optimism if it is to

elude hybris is draped with crape.

~24—

But at this very point a formidable challenge arises. In
y clidine to ordinary experience, am I not artifidily narrowing my
foeus, passing over evidences on which Judaeo-Christian Metaphysies

and Religion have built their esohatologtcat. Success stories? Do

not the R&XEMHEXHHX revelations cmmunvested 4 the medium
of Grace assure us of the ultimate justification of our fragmen-
tary existence and its fragmentary accomplishments? // Were these
"revelations" really confined to the mystical experience of a
"beyond", I would have to repeat what I said earlier about the

vy truth value of all affirmations of a'Dear" God: They are unarguable
and irrelevant for those who have not seen the vision or heard the
voice. But this is just not so, and the religious agnostic meets
with what to him are immanent experiences, which however seem to
partake of the sura that envelops the intuitions of the "believer".

/ Judge for yourself when I relate to you such an experience, Last

fall we took our grandehildren to a performance of Mozart's Figaro.
During the first two acts I felt very tired and unable to listen
with more than a detached interest. Now, as you will remember, in
the third act the Countess and Suzanne conspire against the Count's
philendering by contriving a billet doux which is to trick him into
a rendez-vous leading to his final unmasking. The letter 1s com-
posed before our eyes to the sound of a famous duet, the Countess
dictating and Suzanne repeating whet she writes. I have known the

v melody since my childhood and have heard innumberable times. Anyhow
knowing the opera practically by heart I did not expect anything
"new" to happen. It AN, While the duet was proceeding I found

myself suddenly transposed to a level of emotion which no Prometheus

-25-

can "conquer", access to which cannot be manipulated, for which
there is no open sesame.

(we wouta miss the essence of such experiences were we to
equate them with aesthetic intuitions. Not all music opens this
door y- Beethoven's rarely and even Mozart's g-minor symphony points
to a different dimension, On the other hand, the smile of a child,
the seent of a flower, the call of a bird, the sun setting over
the Vermont hills or rising behind the snowy peaks of the Engadin -
any event however sublime or triviels in itself ean serve as vehicle
of this emotion. Among the artistic occasions which opened this
vegion of experience to me, I remember my first viewing of Gior-
gone's Venus, the sight of Concordia's Temple in Agrigento, or
Orpheus! aria exalting transfigured nature in Gluck's opera (for
obvious reasons I do not mention encounters with "religious™ art.)
However different emong themselves, these particular media all con-
vey a profound and noble message. fhe contrary seems true of the
Letter Duet in Figaro. On the surface the literal meening of the
scene as enacted by the two ladies is nothing if not lighthearted.
But we only need remember the nostalgic aria of the Countess, which

precedes the duet, to grasp the derker undertones which are Vente
gehoben" in what is taking place - the term understood in Hegel's
meaning as “overcome and yet preserved", The same is trge of an-
other Mozart scene listening to which has more than once raised
for me the magic curtain: the duet of the two KAMAZHK heroines

in the first act of Cosi Fan Tutte, after their lovers took leave
from them. There the plot is soa tneeay frivolous, since the men

only pretend to go to battle; they plan to return presently in dis-

-26-

guise to test the faithfulness of their beloved. And yet the melo-
dy resounds the sweet sorrow that @& every parting awakens.

Still, such allusions completely fail to give verbal expres-
sion to the content of these messages. It is of its essence that
such content eannot be conceptualized, though it can be sung,
painted, danced,or "prehended"in the inscrutable sights and in-
articulate sounds of Nature. Wothing is gained, but the integ-
rity of the experience is violated, if the attempt is made to re-
late these "messages" to a transcendent "sender", especially if
the "noise" of metaphysical and theological speculation is offered
as a true reading. We cannot deny these experiences, but we must
learn to live with their mystery.

; More can be said about the mood in which the recipient finds

tee eae. The most fitting word that oceurs to me is SERENITY.
This is what Schiller must have meant when he wrote: Ernst ist
das Leben, heiter ist die Kunst. A strange unity of propinquity
and distance, of participation and aloofness, beyond libido but
also beyond agape because beyond striving and caring, filled with
vital power but all energies flowing towards the. receptive an-
tennae - the opposite pole to the"esrnest"mood of_emitting

energy in which the particeps conjurationis goes about his busi-

ness.

And yet the conduits of "Nemitting”’are not simply cut off from
the conduits of "receiving." Experiencing consummate Serenity -
my psychological MWMXKXKWEa substitute for ontological Grace ~-
is like spending a night in the depth of dreamless sleep. This

does not by itself further our diurnal undertakings , but it"re~

~27-

charges our batteries" for their performance, In a similar manner
we draw power of will and strength of purpose from an experience
which is beyond our willing and serves no purpose, Moreover,

in moving us into a dimension in which success and failure, fear
and hope have no place, we touch for a fleeting moment the point

where even temporality loses its sting: & fulfilled present.

Is th

lationship matual? If the rare instants of con-~

summate Serenity give us strength for the days and years of our
active effobts, can these efforts open the barriers that ordina-
rily block our entrance into the fulfilled present? As the Chris-

tian Doctrines of Good Works states it: they cannot. It is of
the snnenos of these experiences that they be 6t contrived, T
know nothing of the state of mind which certein Eastern practices
of meditation, not to mention chemical short-cuts from opium to
LSD, are said to produce. But I suspect that they all lack the
featire of naturalness which attaches to the "spontaneous" exper-
jience, Though lighting up a region whieh lies ordinarily in dark-
ness, 1t is a region in which we feel at home. What it reveals
does not bear the mark of startling novelty but, like the images
in Plato's anamnesis, of latent familiarity.

Because it is beyond the reach of the purest intention and
noblest aeed our lives, singly and collectively, cannot be built
on waiting for this gift. In this *#e Catholic moderation saw deep-
er than the extremism of Imther and Calvin. Good works - the tasks
of the conjuratio-though not exhausting the range of human exper-

dence, are the daily bread of our existence. They are that which

can be willed, and therefore is under the command of the Ought,

~28-
about which more will be said presently. It is essential to will
what can be willed, even if all cannot be willed. In a striking
parallel a profound witticism has it that Jesus asked us to love
our neighbor, not: to like at?

The Russian Orthodox Church knows the custom of the "faithless
prayer". It concerns those who have temporarily fallen out of Grace.
They are enjoined to continue praying even if their hearts are empty.
This is not meant as a magic contrivance to restore faith, but as a
way of keeping oneself prepared for the gift of faith if - not: when -
it is offered. Perhaps in being serious about the human conjuratiog
and its aim of improving the future,we do the best we can to remain

open for the serene present,

Aq Are...

3.We are alone but we band together - only this can validate our

Smomnae ein :

existence. "In our daily trials, rebellion plays the same role as
does the “cogito"in the category of thought: it is the first cluc.

But this clue lures the individual from his S@XX@UEX solitude, Re-
bellion is the common groud on which every man bases his first values.
T rebel - therefore we exist." (The Rebel, p. 28). In this passage
Camus places his primary experience of Rebellion side by side with
the Cartisian. By actually substituting my Credo-which anyhow is

not identical with that of Camus - for Descartes}, I go a step
further, It is a step in the direction of your own thinking, as it
has taken shape in your recent book. You deny the primacy of "cogito",
that is, of pure consciousness, which you conceive as an abstraction
from what is truly conerete and the bearer of the "dynamies of the
real™: “iving foree transformed into action “where inwardness act-

ively transcends itself into the outward and continues itself mee

ei

=-29-

into itewith its actions". There the ego exists "at once with it-
self (intensive) and in the midst of the world (extensive )"

But, and I am not sure whether you wall follow me that far,
what is to be validated on this level of BHXiMEX primary experience
4s not a "sum" but a "sums". In other words, the isolated self
seems to me no less an abstraction from concrete realitythan is
pure consciousness, with which it ig intimately related. This is
not meant as a romantic hypostasis of the mindd of the self into
a'group mind"or of the individual body into a member of a mystical

commnal body - it refers to the content that is experienced by

the intensive-extensive body in which the self exists. When-

ever. “inwardness transcends itself by not only acting ypon the out-

F PP Lean
ward but by also being acted upon from the outward , others are

oN

present in our experience,
‘Now it is essential to realize that, though this sagen tence
refutes the idea of a monadological isolation of the theoretical
self, it does not as such establish a "we", At least in principle
the world might meet us as pure resisténee, frustrating rather than
yielding to our self-transcending actions, as indeed it often does,
It is a singular mode of interaction , of which the mother-child
relation is probably the original pattern, that establishes the
we" - a mode to which the archetypical conjurat ions dedicate them-

selves by a solemn oath, Thus only when and to the extent to which,

~ #

“80«

the I's of which it is composed? It certainly is neither a super-
self nor a mere aggregate of the component selves. If I referred
above to a singular process of interaction as the source of the
_we_, I go now further by identifying such_we with the individual
selves in the process of spontaneous and solidary interaction. We
are really back at the old story of the nature of universals,
Abelard's solution to which is the answer to our problem. When
asked about the nature of the community of Christ's disciples,

he answered that neither was it the twelve disciples each taken
singly in his natural state , nor a thirteenth ens over and above
the living twelve, but it was these twelve when gathered together
in the spirit of Christ.

It is of more than classificatory interest to have the right
answer to this question. This answer must serve as the beacon ,
guidivg and warning, for the contemporary strugglea& of Emancipa-
tion to find its bearings between the Scylla of anarchy and the
Charybdis of collectivist tyranny. What is at stake can be demon-

strated on a typicah example. Recently Dr.Glenn T. Seaborg, the
Head of the US Atomic Energy Commission, in an otherwise admirable
survey of recent scientific and technological achievements and im-
minent breakthroughs, summed up by saying: "Today we have more free-
dom of choice than any of our ancestors ever had ... We have more
freedom from Ignorance, superstition and iron-elad tradition and,
as a result, more freedom to change - to control and direct our
future, our creative evolution...,.. I believe that we can be

masters of our fate",

I am now not concerned with the Utopianism to which these words Dive

«3L-

vent and which recognizes no intrinsic limit to what Man can do.
Rather I ask: who are the "we" that have more freedom than their
ancestors, that control "our" future and can be masters of "our"
fate? There is only one realistic answer: the scientists and tech-
nicians and those who wield the power to apply these discoveries
and inventions or to authorize the rest of us to make use of them.
This is not meant to reopen the fundamental tssaes bound up with
the orgenization of any large-scale society, or to raise doubt
about the need in such societies for an administrative body of ,
funetionaries who plan and execute on behalf of others. Rather

I wish to emphasize that, as a direct consequence of the modern
scientific and technological revolution, the ancient puzzle of
"quiseustodiet ipsos custodes" has become much more complex.

Let us face B& the fact that, all through history, freedom
of individual decision-making has been safeguarded by the impotence
of potential violatérs rather than by their good intentions. Ad-
ministrative inefficiency , sparseness of communication, absence
of an organized police force and, last but not least, rivalry
among the powerholders themselves, lately institullonalized as
constitutional checks and balances - these and, in the Ghristian
pra,the fear of Hell on the part of rulers, set limits to central
control and abuses. Even during the "darker" ages such limits en-
forced by circumstances assured a fair scope for individual dis-
eretion. Conversely the danger of Toteliterten/nes been steadily

inereasing with the widening range of effective adminisiration and

communication within and beyond the borders of the national states.

The spread of atomic technology , of automated production, of social

~32—

hygiene including population control, of electronic media of communi-
cation, within—and-beyond—the—borders-ofthe-netionel states. not to
mention arms control and accelerated economic development, are bound
to shift the emphasis even more strongly to centralized decision-
making. I comoletely disregard any sinister intentions on the part
of the holders of power - these growing assaults on individual free-
dom are the price 268 Fur, RESEOISy end rising standard of living.

It has been aptly said it will be much simpler to emancipate Man-
kind than Men, which is indeed the stated aim of Dostoevsky" 9 Grand
Inquisitor, the most benevolent of dictators ever conceived.

There is danger that these very fashionable warnings ave Mnder~
stood as a nostalgic plea for the return to the conditions of nine-
teenth century Europe and North America, as they present themselves
in retrospect. Such a plea is false romanticism for two reasons.
Very few people would be prepared to pay the price RAR for such
return in terms of poverty, social insecurity, low life expectation
and material sud-opiniGil squalor. Moreover, even under the aspect
of personal freedom that century offered promises rather than ful-
filments. The significant exception is the intelligentia whose
members, both as professionals and as freelancers, enjoyed a degree
of independance from collective pressure for which there is no par-
alleyin any other era of history including classical Athens. This
being the most if not the only articulate group in every society,
it is small wonder that it now responds to any new encroachments
upon its privileges with the passion with which vested interests

are generally defended.

Many, though certainly not all, such encroachments sre direct-

-335-

ly related to the changed position of the intelligentia in the
social hierarchy. To aoply a term of Mannheim's, up to the first
World War the Western intelligentia was "unattached", not only be-
cause its members wanted it so, but also because the holders of
political and economic power had no use for their services.
This has drastically changed during the last generation, and is
likely to change even more with the growing bureaucratization
and scientific organization, of all social funetions. In the
society of the future the role of the intellectual will be amch
closer to that of the medieval cleric - with consequences for his
outlook and social responsibility which Méithew Arnold was one of
the first to foresee. There is no immtable yardstick for what
is the "best" relationship between individual freedom and group
order, independent of the socio-technological framework in which
a society operates Not only must freedom possessed be guarded
by eternal vigilance, but the very meaning of freedom to be
achieved needs be discovered anew in every historieal epoch.

I will come back to this problem on the solution of which
the ultimate success of the strugsle for world-wide Emancipation
may well depend. Bat With inereasing centralization of power as
our inevitable fate, 911 I want to stress here is that, never
less than today may we take the existence and preservation of
a genuine “we" for granted. Though it is both the source and
the goal of the _conjuratio as earlier defined, it is not em-
bodied in every social grouping, nor is all collective action
in its service.

Do fallacies of thought undermine the certainty of the

-34-

Cartesian Ego? Hardly, since it is in the act of thinking that
the Ego is supposed to comd to itself. However, banding together

for som arbitrary goal does not in equal measure constitute a

"we", SUCHXXHKARMEXHEXGHXASH Only in banding together in the
4p
a? "right" manner for the "r pecs the ensuing collectivity find

its validation as a “we", Such interrelationship is not one of

"natural" Being but one of Ought.

-Paky-285~

\

Note the date. .Whereas the preceding pages were written

down in an uninterrupted flow within 11 days- as if some gracious
Countess dictated phen - ie - another w. has now passed with
“ nothing to show for, I ~eontinue ob bogged down soon -

why? There is an aixioes a reecon why the"masic” of the experiment,
so potent in the first phase, hdd<to peter out. I did not notice
it while I was at it, but owt fort was considerable for an eld-

erly gentleman. Still, I a fraid, \there is a more serious reason
which is connected with, he ubstance\of what I would like to put

3 on paper (which concerns’ the ace of thi GET in my view of the

“ world): I feel much ss sure” “of my 2 ground. This’ came into the

open in the argumentative mien I suddenty: assumed, and which threat-
ened to transform the letter into a “paper”. “Not only is this con-

F trary to my inbéntions but being, quite unashamédly,a dilettant in
these matters, scholarly guise does not fit me abel. All depends
now whether I can regain the “light” tone and the tack of concern
at uncovered flanks - else I had better give up.

vy

ee st

II. Being and Ought - Men the Hybrid.

Ie it is true that the "we" relationship is not one of natural

Pegns put one of Ought, it seems that I have crossed & eritical

oundery with my last remarks in Section I. So far I have claimed

jes within the realm of "primary ex-
2 est ce. “ =
Universe - his banding to-

ecarious life over which

an unaebealatie eon pronounced ~ indeed these

are existential read in the prute facts of ex-
perience. But now I have qualified the manner of our banding to-
gether, assigning to it the specific task of creating a "we", an
jnterrelationship among the selves which in turn is subject to the
conditions of spontaneity and soli@ertty. And in looking back , Sz
even what I said about the struggle against avoidable evil and the
historical form of universal Emancipation 1t assumes in our ere,
now appears as anything but a natural mutation: it peveals itself
as a summons to modern Man which he can accept or refuse. Who
summons? What are the precise terms of the eall? What is its
evound of validity? Can I read the amswer to these questions
also in facts of experience?

Alas, my existentialist friends are of little help to me at
this point. They have recourse to a Decisonism Which is aptly
expressed in Wagner's Meistersinger when Walter Stolzing, trying
to compose his Preislied, asks Hans Sachs: Wie fang ich nach der
Regel an? end receives the answer: Ihr stellt sie selbst und folgt
thr dann} The inevitable result is “value revativism" - in principle

as many rules as there are rule- -giversz- while the exclusive reliance

-36=

on a deciding "will" as the source of any OUGHT leaves the validity
of that which is willed, to say the least, in suspense.
At first sight I seem to have adopted the same position in

the last chapter of On Economic Knowledgs when I refused to set

any absolute stendards for the determination of ecdénomic goals,
In reality I adopted the position of sclemtific value relativism,

which denies that values can be established as intersubjectively

valid by Giseursive reasoning. Whether there is any other way |

of establishing ‘then I did not discuss. As a matter of fact,

this problem was very much in my mind at the time, and all my
recent flirtations with moral and political philosophy can be
traced to this origin. To that exkent what I am going to say in
the following pages fits into the context of the paper you have
consented to prepare for that distant Conference, and it may
stimulate you by at least raising your blood pressure.

When I now dare to stump over ground where geniusses fear
to tread, I want you to believe mey that I am aware of my fool-
hardiness, that I do not pretend to any originality in the face
of a pailosophical discourse which has been going on for more
than 2000 years and, as I said before, that I hold no dogmatic
convictions but am awkwardly groping toward the light. Though
a number of issues will be touched upon, it is really one and
only one proposition which I want to expound: that the Ought,
and this includes its content - the Gooa - as well as its im-
| perative mode, is indeed a fact of experience. Moreover, even

the valigity of both is rooted there. To lesefin your shock let

me add “that I shall base my proposition - so often refuted and
with such good reasons ~- on a particular understanding of the

nature of experience, But it is true that what I sm going to
~37~

vay, implicitly denies any entological foundation of the Ought,

as the term has been traditionally employed. In other words,

I extendg my "immanentist" view of the world also to the realm

of values and norms, and yet I claim that I escape relativism.
Before presenting my case I had better admit from the outset

that, set, even if it should be true that "knowledge of the good"

and its obligatory nature can be accomodated within the realm of

existence without any appeal to a separate realm of "essences",

such experiental monism cannot bridge the primary dualistic gap.

Since only Man is subject to an Ought, of the content and imper-

ative charscter of which he alone is aware, the spli

mein:

define as 5 Nature with a capital 3 9, Perhaps I should guard my

rear by not dogmatically confining awareness of an Ought to the
human species, but should grant its possible presente in other
species dwelling m in unknown regions of the Universe or, of greater
relevance to me, make allowance for glines of such awareness in
higher animals - I refer to my adventure$with dogs and, of course,
to lioness Elsa. It would not be surprising if, as is usual with
borderlines, the one which separates Man from Nature werd also
fuszy.

But wherever we draw the line, so long as we draw a line as
we must, manlike creatures fraught with an Ought emerge, in the
technical sense of the word, as a discontinuity in the progess
of Evolution. In stating this so bluntly , I place myself in
opposition to speculations ~ entertained -by—phiiesophers.from-
Avistotietohitchesd-end-Tittieh,= abott a potentia in a

stone or a tree latently anticipating what Men manifestly poss-

A i A
nok ta Beye, Coe, ey bn
}

¢ impe

-38-

esses. I don't think that what ¥#@ you say in your book about

Ott wim
‘inwardness" in living processes, beléw the le¥el of consciousness

necessarily falls in the same category, but caution is advisable,
And Portmann, who detects such “inwardness" even in plants, goes
2 ag 2

hay

he
y too far. Anyhow such speculations, which are bare of

any empirical foundation, appear to me as blasphemies against the
nystfery of Emergence, a rationalistic erime which is not atten-
uated by the fact that it is perpebretvedeperpetVated in the name
of "systematic" unity.

Thus my world remains split inte two "sub-worlds": the human
species aware of an Ought, and Nature which not only_is indiffer-
ent but also beyond the reach of any imperative that would permit
to judge it. On the contrary, we can now see that the very term
tindifference" when applied to Nature has an anthropomorphic
ring. Nature can be called indifferent only when seen in the
light of Man's capability to "eare". And yet, posing the Dual-
ism in this simplistic manner as 2 clean-out dichotomy between
Man and Nature glosses over a cardinal fact that constitutes Man
as we know him, It is of the essence of Men thet he is part of
Nature, and I am not speaking of his body only. Or as I had
better say: his Emergence from Nature has been fragmentary only,

end what did emerge - let me call it Man's Humanity - has only

etly ‘emancipated itself from sub-human bends.

I am using again the term Zmancipation, but now it points
to fetters other than these in the breaking of which I. see

modern Man engaged. These, as I defind them earlier, are extern-
|
i

=39-

be
al constrains imposed by his naturel environment, his fellow

men and false Gods. Now I am speaking of internal constraints

od

a
which his (aybrid) \structure - part Rouge: part Humen - places on

ae ee act Naat

his evolving into ful] Huminity.
g ful} Humgaity

If this is to make sense I must add two qualifications.

Though my coneern is with the moral dimension of what has emerged,

I do not overlook that the Human has also other dimensions - ratio-

nal, aesthetic, religious (as I understand it!) - which distinguish
1% qualitatively from the Sub-Human. But, in assigning here pride
of place to the moral dimension, I do not think that I distort the
true proportions. This is the dimension in which the course of
Men's Evolution, if not his physical survival, will be decided,
and thus also that of all, humen qualities.

The second qualification is more important to me. In speak-
ing of Evolution, or earlier of Mutetion, I am only concerned with
qualities of mind end body which Peal Men displays. This does not

exclude that the relationships and dependencies of the elements

a structure are open to evolution-

ary changes and that, as I firmby pelieve, the mery survival’ ‘of

which are fused in his ‘nyba

the hOman race depends on such, a change. But at this point L

want to embtiastze chat whet 4s "naturel" in Man is not essentially

in conflict with what is “numen As I shall presently explain,

the (“tomen") in my sense of the term is identical with the Go

| to. ‘the real ization of whieh the ought summons Ba US. But the myst

so summoned and carrying out she summons includes the vitel ener-

mM
gies of our = peing. The Good remains a bloodless shadow

of the imagination and the Ought an impotent whimper, unless both
~40=

are constantly nourished by these in themselves "neutral" forces
which join Man to Nature at large. I shall argue below that the

tatrinase indifference to Good or Evil, which these vital energies
ee a"

aaa within us share with the soamia forces without, is the major

obstacle to our achieving full Humanity, and is thus the target of
the challenge of the Ought. But even if one day the Human in us

%
were to win out making us pursue Aas , Bood only and always "aus
Neigung" - to quote Schiller's pestenind quip against Kant - what
is"natural" in Man would still provide the power which alone can

transform "Neigung" into "action".

You may wonder why I waste time on what is little more than
a platitude. The reason is that I want to stress the fest mt of
e11 I am saying, dissociating myself explicitly from all hacge
of a transfigured "New Being" as foretold by some of the Prophets,
by Christian doctrine for the aeon following the Second Coming of
Christ or, mm with pseudo-scientific claims, by Teilhard for his

Omega.

. Chen I mean by Humanity has no chiliastic overtones nor must
it wait for miraculous intervention. It is set to Man as he is
as his supreme task even if, being Man, he is bound to fulfil it

imperfectly only.

Let me now finally turn to my main topie: the nature of the
Good and the content of the Ought. In fact, the essence of what
I know about this I have already stated when speaking of a genuine

"we" as a spontaneous solidary interrelationship, As I said then,

ie actually equate such ee a "we" with the Good, seeing in it the

fulfilment of Man's Humenity. C.S.Lewis, in a little book en-

"Whol 4

/ 2

-41-

titled The Abolition of Man, has drawn up a list of the moral ideals
Henkers
which the great religious and philosophical have advanced over the
a

millenia. Not only did he discover a striking coincidence, but the

gist of what so coincides is precisely the we" Tam pointing to.

Thais remark is not meant as an appeal to authority nor eas expressing

the belief that validation can be found in unanimity. But it makes

the problem of value relativism appear less formidable, even if dis-

senting voices, from Ecclesiastes to Nietzsche, mast not be suppressed.
Just because there is such wide agreement on fundamentals certain

divergent nuances are worth noting. ‘They will come into the open

when I now comment in greater detail on the three attributes I have

assigned to a genuine “we".

1) The “we” is an interrelationship. This is to express my conviction,

already indicated in my reference to Abelard, that even in the most
perfect association the selves are to preserve their individuality

and are not to be dissolved in a "higher" totality. There my Western

packground comes into the open. It also makes me reject the Upani-
like to cite. Not only does this maxim proclaimsa static identity
rather than a dynamic coordination among the selves, put it traces
such identity to snother one, namely between §he individual creatures

and the universal Brahma. Satie L eae ee nyt ?

REURISRS dees 20%. meer * 5 stmt er belief in as

The tfue nature of the “ gekettionannp seems to me pevtackily ex- <<

pressed in the Biblical exhortation: Love your neighbor as yourself.

~42-
I am at the moment not concerned with the meaning of “love” in this
command, not an easy question to which I shall return below. What
matters here is the "as yourself", It peints, as it were, to a
consanguinity of the selves without demanding the surrender of their
selfhood. Though the selves are enjoined to overcome their separate-
ness, the existential fact of such separateness is acknowledged. Con-
sanguinity seems to be a fitting symbol for a relationship that binds
the selves even irrespettive of their forming a "we". It poihts to
the umbilical cord which ties us physically to an ancestry to which
innumerable others, known and mostly unknown to us, are equally tied,
and with whom we share Man's fate as spoken of earlier.

2) If"interrelationship"among the selves rather than "isolation" or

"adentity"” is to describe the structure of the "we",/ (solldarity/is
to define its substance. Much would have to be added to make the
meaning of this attribute of the “we"precise. My earlier stress
on the integrity of the selves should guard me against any senti-
mental misinterpretation of solidarity as perpetual "togetherness"
or defence of ang status quo. Thoreau at Walden, alone and re-
pellious, struggled for the genuine we" by escaping from, and de-
nouneing, false associations. What I am doing in writing this letter
is an act of solidarity, as is your empathetic and critical reading,
and solidarity is thus established not only between you and me, but

also between -but-elce-between each one of us and all those who grope

But it is difficult and perhaps impossible at this stage forfeny
one to go beyond generalities and abstractions. Every era must dis-

cover its own pattern in which solidarity takes on conerete form in

~43~

accord with who is recognized as a "neighbor". It is often said
that in the realm of morality the notion of progress has no mean-
ing, because the idea of the Good is transhistorical, and Mankind
at large is today as far from its realization as it ever was. This

may be sof in one sense, and yet a steady advance has been made in

the w

ng of the range of solidarity by acknowledging ever new
groups of living creatures " as ourselves", We have just entered

the historical epoch in which such ality is to be accorded to

the entire human species, and the discovery of the institutions,
actions and attitudes compatible with this range of neighborhood

is the conerete task of modern politicas Man and of the philosophy
that is to guide him.

3). Interrelationship is the structure of the "we" - - ~ Solidarity its

substance ~- the "good" mode of realization is sp a I should

be surprised if you had any basic objections against wat T have said
so far, I can well imagine that we now come to a parting of the
roads.

Implicitly I have already called attention to the three levels
of experience in which the “we", equivalent with the Good, wmateriad~
materializes: a peculiar state in which the selves meet (a"macro”
level, to use familiar terminology), peculiar actions which the
selves perform in establishing and maintaining that state (a'micro”
level), and a peculiar "mode" (also a "miero" phenomenon) in which
oe are carried out. It is this mode with which I am now con-
cerned, In calling it "spontaneity" I clearly side with Schiller
against Kant (though it will presently be shown that, speaking

about different things, both could be, and in fact were, right.)

-44-

fhe alternative mode in which "good" actions ean be peformed
is, of course, "duty consciousness" or obedience to an Ought. What :

is its significance? Let me make my position drastically clear.

I side with those who see the consummation of the Good in not

i only "serving our friends" but in serving them "aus Neicung". (1
have not found an equivalent word in English - possibly "sympathy"
will do). The reason is that acting in this mood establishes not
merely a good state through the performances of good gctions, but
ie reveals the actor himself as good. By this I mean that he
is fully Human, that is, in perfect control” of the vital forces
that sustain his action. Under these conditions there 3 is Ro room

apt for an Ought. Or rather the content of the Ought which is nothing

else but the good state realized by good action, is being accom-

plished independent of any daperattve whieh issues. from. the Ought . °

However, and here lies Schiller's gieunters taming of Kant, spon-
taneity in “doing good" is a mode of action which itself is beyond
human control, and Mankind would be badly off if its members had
to wait for the uncertain"gift"of such spontaneity, in the mean-
while acting without guiding rule. It is at this point that the
Ought takes over, commanding Man as it appears at first sightx

u .
from without to do good"leider aus Pflichtgefuehi", to vary Schil-

ler. Thus the presence of an Ought is both the symptom and the

antidote of our shortcomings as Men, that is, of our hybrid tru

eas

full ‘Bunenity las e evonsnic. “value or price aie the/

of our poverty Qbeying the command, that is, doing good does not

make us good.

~48-

Bet in consciously striving for the good state, we become the
next best: just. And a just order, that is, an interrelationship
in which soliderity is aimed at in obedience $o the call of the
Ought, is all that can be demanded from us, because it is all that
is in our power to achieve.

I think that this view of the matter throws some light on the
tedious debate about the relative rank of "Neigung" and "Pflieht"
or, to use Tillich's antithesis, of Agape mr and Justice. Were

Agape or Neigung the universal mode of ac

of genut

the good state c

posed of good Men, But this is no goal to strive for. Neither
Schiller nor Tillich seem to be aware that Neigung and Agane -

‘the spirit that animated the participants in the Last Supper -

are "gifts" and not products of the will. We must not be trapped

by words, and the word "love" is easily such a trap. The witticism
quoted earlier according to which Jesus asks us to love our neighbor,
not‘to like him, speaks the truth. Love whenever commanded can only
mean "doing good! And the command of the Old Testament referred to
above: love your neighbor as yourself, can only enjoin us to be

just in the sense of the Golden Rule. (What anyhow is the meaning

of the Hebrew words?) In this sehse we can, and should, love even
our cnentes. 18 is true that justice “remains an external act that
can be performed with legal detachment or cool objectivity” (Tillich,
Morality and Beyond, p.38), and it is also true that Agape "contains
justice in itself as an unconditional element" (p.39) But Agave,
namely "mutual participation and, by participation, union....

which is ultimately re-union"(p.39)cannot be the “ultimate moral

~46-

principle" (p.39), if by moral principle we mean the imperative
guiding our actions. Agape like Neigung is transmoral, that is,
beyond that which is "aufgegeben".

The Good as a spontaneous and solidary interrelationship -

the Ought summoning us to pe J thet is

just, Ee work for the achieve-

ment of the good s ate wae esn I mean non T assert ‘thet tae

insights from e: rience? Obviously I cannot mean that the

source of this "knowledge" is my encounter with others in the prac-
tiee of ordinary life, or the detached observation of the social
states and processes in which I am involved. Not that what I meet
in such ordinary experience is all "bad", namely dissociation, con~-
flict and coercion. I find that others are sometimes with me and
at other times against me, as I myself fluctuate petween amiability
and hostility, spending most of my life in cool distance from my
'meighbors”
But then, out of the blue, a flash occurs, a curtein rises

and another scene is revealed. This level of experience is com-
parable to that which commmnieates to us the undecipherable mess-
ages that trenspose us into the mood of Serenity. But this new
message can be deciphered, It tells us thet our neighbor truly
is as we are ourselves, that weet appeared to us before as differ-
ent and a — of hot attraction or cold revulsion was really
Maya, whose veil has been lifted revealing the neutral You as a

_ brotherly Thou. And as Serenity is the mood in which the in-
effable meaning hidden in trivial and sublime events is contem-
plated, so Agape is the mood in which the 'twe™ as the Good is

grasped in these moments of illuminetion. But if Serénity is

47

a timeless mood, arresting us passively in the fulfilled presends,
Agape releases all our energies for the perpetuation of the il-
luminated moment toward a fulfilled fubure.

springs
Brom the anamnegis of this experience/the Ought that grips

us on the level of ordinary living. It asks us to do what we
eannot help doing while in the state of illumination. Thus its
command to sect justly is not really heteronomous. It issues from
the Human in us to our hybrid total. What is good in the self
speaks to old Adam - this gives the imperative of the Ought its
categorical character,

Gx So far so good. I have been describing experiences which,
though gut of the ordinary, are familiar to most @K men, even if
the level of consciousness on which they arise seems to vary widely.
But on what g) ounds am I entitled to ascribe validity to these ex-
periences and not to the contradictory impressions of daily life?
Even if carrying the strongest psychological evidence, why should
I trust them to be messengers of the truth?

My answer, which will shock you,is: there is no other vali

dation, though the possibility of “error” - it would be the most
disastrous @kX#H existensial error - most be coneeded. In other
words, this is my "wager" on which I sake my moral all. I am not
even embarrased by this shortcut, because I think that it is easy
to demonstrate that philosophical and theological ontologists,
who claim safer grouhds for their assertions, arrive in the end
at the same impasse.

Fries, the "psychologieal" Kantian has found an apt formu-
lation for the "dogma" on which every philosophical ontology

rests: Man's confidence in his reasony - Selbstvertrauen der

-49-

doing all and only that which promotes the good state of the
genuine "we", we seem to be pursuing a positive goal, whereas
fighting Avoidable Evil hes a negative ring. Such fight seems
to content itself, as it were, with eradicating the weeds, while
the just Man appears to sow the seed from which the tree of life
is to grow.

In reality this apparent contradiction is spurious, because
all that Man can do, and needs to do, for "promo ttng t59) state",
is to fight Evil. What is "good" in that state, namely Man's

1 pee
t : Humanity, is beyond his doings, It mysterously emerged with Man
ita cil a
her ! himself in the process of Evolution, though adulterated with
ey a cniealicn
Z, other elements; Mon eannot and need not gem create it. What

4
P| he can do and what the moral imperative summons him to do is

” to liberate the "gold of Humanity" from the “dress of Nature! with
—— ee ~ —_ = ;
which it forms an unsteble amalgem. It has often been commented j
{ uyon that moral precepts are ultimately negstive. They are indeed
so, and not only when we are enjogned not to kill, but also when

we are asked to feed the hungry and to clothe the naked, to

Pp
gladden the widow's heart and to chamion the cause of the stranger.

Even when the deeds themselves are positive, the imperative that

ordains their performance is directed against the shortcomings
Marae 2 of our hybrid structire, - the"weakness of the flesh"~- which

saps the spontanety of performance. Thus the Just Man is really

a weedkiller who knows in his heart that good fruit will grow in
- a

a well ploughed field,

I must now explicate what I mean when I associate Evil with

Nature, as it manifests itself in hybrid Man. I have guarded

et (0 tecetlonne: ! pees aa 7

-5O-

myself earlier against the misunderstanding that the Human, the
ideally good Man, should be conceived as a "denatured" being, I
should perheps add that I also am light-years away from the clas~
sical Dualism between mind or soul and body, identifiying the
latter - the "prison of the soul'-with the seat, if not the source,
of Evil. The real "split" rund right through the totality of the
person; it divides that in us which "eares" - our "awakened" feel-
ing and will and the bodily funetions that serve them - from that

in our psycho-physical totality which is"indifferent" and thus on

the level of the subhuman cosmic forces. oomncondlcagpapos Prada pits:
sesmee Sox

As you may remember, I argued already in my Bloch paper that

indifference, a neutral attribute of the Universe at large, is

a

———

the supreme Evil in Man, that "inertia of the heart" is morally worse

than i11 intend, - Eiehmann (in Hanneh Arendt's interpretation)
as compared with Ilse Kech. The reason for this verdict does not
lie in the social consequences of the respective evil acts ~- the
Law punishes quite understendibly criminal intent more severely
than negligence - but in what it reveals about the offender.

At first sight the moral offenders ~ as is true of those
who try to de good - form a continuum, betraying varying degrees
of "Inhumenity", inversely with the lucidity with which the vision
of the good is experienced, andthe strength of the imperative which
the vision arouses. Even if we disregard all cases of psycho-somatic
pathology as we should in moral evaluations, it appears that Men
differ considerably in their capacity for these experiences.
nese" they do so by nature of by nurture we could decide only

if we knew more about "gocio-psychological" causation, that is,

-5le

about the influence which the environment, personal and institut-
fonal, exerts on our capacity for perceiving the Gooa and for acfuy s
in accord with what we pereeive. Still, many findings of depth
psychology and even a study such as Konrad Lorenz! Das _ sogenannte
Boese_ suggest that 111 intent, aggression, deceit and other offences
against the "we" are really acts of resentment and responses te
legitimate grievances. In a profound sense such offenders “know
not what they do”. Therefore they have not only a claim on our
forgivingness but are a challenge to the moral state of society.
Being the result of man-made conditions, the Evil they do is
Avoidable Evil.

But now it is significant that the success of such redeeming
moral action - mental cure and rehebilitation - seems largely to
depend oh the vital strength of the offender, that is, on these
very energies which while morally uncontrolled cause the offending
act. It is there that "inertia of the heart"reveals itself as
the main obstacle. The history of religious conversion tells us
of many great sinners who turned into saints. But we know of no
Laodicean who died a prophet. The same psychological rule seems
to govern the moral life of ordinary men. There is hope for
Dmitry Karamazoff who burns his fuel in evil passion. But what
else than self-destriction is left to Ivan or Stavrogin, not to

mention Smerdjakoff, who sin "in cold blood"?

ot, that the evil deeds committed in the mood of in-
agp i

difference are more hideous than the erimes of the conscious
CieretseS

meléfactor. But the callous offender is beyond zedonp ion, bes

my
pina the 0 terme He \y even nearer the zero Di
peing & state

He i /Apates in nis

» indefinite guxaaa future?
1a no

e as we ynow it.

In his sub-humen wor
as it is said, spits
goorifying ‘imase ef this marginal

4n the midst of 4%, Thougo

ea Pather than one who Nopserves” ’

6 peen stammer ing about youches

nay
pe no reason why one should

se have

that our jnstinct
waits

gness wile anew era of history
ono & , still enigmatic

wast ellis smounts

oplem 18>
litical, & problem r

Tre true pF

As always yours:

\

even nearer the zero point

efind the term. He
He satle ‘dpates in his being a state

sure a8 we know it.

pane

Nature is said to reach in som, ‘e@ indefinite Rikwxa future:

imum entropy or dead equilibtin » In his sub-human world no

serative sounds any echo - ever ne Lord, as it is said, spits

im out. Cams' Etranger is 6 terrifying imgge of this marginal

Mens
Let me stop here, as 1t were, in the midst of it. Though

speaking as one who is involved rather than one who "observes",

i Wh:
{ should like to think wnee’t have been stammering about touches

A

what we all live by. Tere should be no reason why one should

ng it up from the depth, were it sb that our instinets have

gt their naive self-assuredness while a
} new era of history waits

om) iver py our efforts fr the worlb 6:
e delivered by fo} from the hg geal éndeeatic

resents fhe true problem is, of courses what all.
: wis amounts

to in terms of eoncrete action, personal and political, -
“problem

2 aly a preamble, SMemmagher

for waieh these remarks offer har

As always yours,

Jt

POC ry presze ty by wy calfy
— vtithend phe yotirnpw, y aha :

UNITED HELP, INC.
44 East 23rd Street
New York,N Y.10010

Nehemiah Robinson Memorial Scholarship Fund -

November 26, 1974
To: Members of the Scholarship Committee

From: Gabriele D.Schiff Re:: Kagan, Georgette
895 West End Avenue
New York,N.¥.10025 .
Born: 8/10/44 = New York,N.Y.

The application of this 30-year old girl came to us in the strangest way.
Originally, her mother had written to our Scholarship Committee member,
Mr. Saul Kagan (who is no relative of hers ) for assistance. We then called
her mother in. The case worker found that Mrs. Kagan had her own set of problems.
In the course of the social work relationship the financial problems of the ti
daughter were mentioned, and the daughter, Georgette, was referred to our Scholarship
Committee. ©

Koes aw
Georgette Kahn was born in New York in 1944, eight months after her father's
death. Her father was a well known scholar who graduated summa cum laude from
the University of Brussels and was connected with outstanding institutions of
higher learning in France. His fields were Social Science and Philosophy of
History. He was very active in the underground movement, and when the Germans
occupied France, he and his wife were forced to flee for racial and political
reasons. They immigrated to this country in December of 1940. Shortly before
his death he was appointed professor of European History at State University of
Indiana, Bloomington, Indiana where ‘he died of pneumonia. After Professor Kagan's
death, Mrs. Kagan gave birth to their daughter. As she was left pennyless,she was
confronted with an endless struggle to keep herself and the child alive.

It soon became evident that Georgette had inherited her parents intellectual gifts.
‘Mrs. Kagan, a talented linguist, made it by her work as translator and teacher of
French possible for her daughter to attend the best schools. Georgette graduated
from Hunter High School and obtained bachelor's and master's degrees from City
College with highest possible grades. Her letters of recommendation leave no
doubt about the fact that her professors consider her an outstanding scholar whose
master's thesis on the attempt of post-war French intellectuals to make sense of theizj
social and political roles and responsibilities will be published in a professesionai
paper named'Telos!! There seems to be little doubt that Miss Kagan should teach

at college level which she can do only with a Ph.D. degree. To achieve this, it will
take her at least two more years. ‘She tutors during the school year and works as a
waitress during the summer months. The mother's income is about $318 a month. She is
68 years old and certainly no help can be expected from her. Georgette took up a
student loan of $600 and expects to earn $640 by tutoring during the spring semester.
Her college-connected expenses run to approximately $2,350. This leaves a deficit of
about $900 which she hopes to cover in part by work as a teaching adjunct.

I would recommend a loan of $300 for the spring term and encourage the young lady
to re-apply to us for the academic year starting in September 1975. . There was also
an application submitted to the Vogelstein Foundation that might be interested in
this outstanding and charming young lady. I should add that I myself interviewed
Miss Kagan and found her serious, goal-minded and struggling hard against tremendous
odds,

10570 0-28.02, Rogenbera HanneL Rina g

10580 24.09.18) Rosenberg Hanna Ring c
10590 11.08.1895 - Rosenbera Hanne] > Ring c
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