“Now it is possible that this soul is Hilde M0ller Knag’s father. He is over there in Lebanon writing a book on philosophy for his daughter’s fifteenth birthday. When Hilde wakes up on June 15, she finds the book on her bedside table, and now she—and anyone else—can read about us. It has long been suggested that this ‘present’ could be shared with others.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“What I am saying to you now will be read by Hilde after her father in Lebanon once imagined that I was telling you he was in Lebanon ... imagining me telling you that he was in Lebanon.”
Sophie’s head was swimming. She tried to remember what she had heard about Berkeley and the Romantics. Alberto Knox continued: “But they shouldn’t feel so cocky because of that. They are the last people who should laugh, because laughter can easily get stuck in their throat.”
“Who are we talking about?”
“Hilde and her father. Weren’t we talking about them?”
“But why shouldn’t they feel so cocky?”
“Because it is feasible that they, too, are nothing but mind.”
“How could they be?”
“If it was possible for Berkeley and the Romantics, it must be possible for them. Maybe the major is also a shadow in a book about him and Hilde, which is also about us, since we are a part of their lives.”
“That would be even worse. That makes us only shadows of shadows.”
“But it is possible that a completely different author is somewhere writing a book about a UN Major Albert Knag, who is writing a book for his daughter Hilde. This book is about a certain Alberto Knox who suddenly begins to send humble philosophical lectures to Sophie Amundsen, 3 Clover Close.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I’m just saying it’s possible. To us, that author would be a ‘hidden God.’ Although everything we are and everything we say and do proceeds from him, because we are him we will never be able to know anything about him. We are in the innermost box.”
Alberto and Sophie now sat for a long time without saying anything. It was Sophie who finally broke the silence: “But if there really is an author who is writing a story about Hilde’s father in Lebanon, just like he is writing a story about us . . .”
“Yes?”
“... then it’s possible that author shouldn’t be cocky either.”
“What do you mean?”
“He is sitting somewhere, hiding both Hilde and me deep inside his head. Isn’t it just possible that he, too, is part of a higher mind?”
Atberto nodded.
“Of course it is, Sophie. That’s also a possibility. And if that is the way it is, it means he has permitted us to have this philosophical conversation in order to present this possibility. He wishes to emphasize that he, too, is a helpless shadow, and that this book, in which Hilde and Sophie appear, is in reality a textbook on philosophy.”
“A textbook?”
“Because all our conversations, all our dialogues ...”
“Yes?”
“... are in reality one long monologue.”
“I get the feeling that everything is dissolving into mind and spirit. I’m glad there are still a few philosophers left. The philosophy that began so proudly with Thales, Em-pedocles, and Democritus can’t be stranded here, surely?”
“Of course not. I still have to tell you about Hegel. He was the first philosopher who tried to salvage philosophy when the Romantics had dissolved everything into spirit.”
“I’m very curious.”
“So as not to be interrupted by any further spirits or shadows, we shall go inside.”
“It’s getting chilly out here anyway.”
“Next chapter!”
Hegel
... the reasonable is that which is viable…
Hilde let the big ring binder fall to the floor with a heavy thud. She lay on her bed staring up at the ceiling. Her thoughts were in a turmoil.
Now her father really had made her head swim. The rascal! How could he?
Sophie had tried to talk directly to her. She had asked her to rebel against her father. And she had really managed to plant an idea in Hilde’s mind. A plan ...
Sophie and Alberto could not so much as harm a hair on his head, but Hilde could. And through Hilde, Sophie could reach her father.
She agreed with Sophie and Alberto that he was going too far in his game of shadows. Even if he had only made Alberto and Sophie up, there were limits to the show of power he ought to permit himself.
Poor Sophie and Alberto! They were just as defenseless against the major’s imagination as a movie screen is against the film projector.
Hilde would certainly teach him a lesson when he got home! She could already see the outline of a really good plan.
She got up and went to look out over the bay. It was almost two o’clock. She opened the window and called over toward the boathouse.
“Mom!”
Her mother came out.
“I’ll be down with some sandwiches in about an hour. Okay?”
“Fine.”
“I just have to read a chapter on Hegel.”
Alberto and Sophie had seated themselves in the two chairs by the window facing the lake.
“Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hege/was a legitimate child of Romanticism,” began Alberto. “One could almost say he developed with the German spirit as it gradually evolved in Germany. He was born in Stuttgart in 1770, and began to study theology in Tubingen at the age of eighteen. Beginning in 1799, he worked with Schelling in Jena during the time when the Romantic Movement was experiencing its most explosive growth. After a period as assistant professor in Jena he became a professor in Heidelberg, the center of German National Romanticism. In 1818 he was appointed professor in Berlin, just at the time when the city was becoming the spiritual center of Europe. He died of cholera in 1831, but not before ‘He-gelianism’ had gained an enormous following at nearly all the universities in Germany.”
“So he covered a lot of ground.”
“Yes, and so did his philosophy. Hegel united and developed almost all the ideas that had surfaced in the Romantic period. But he was sharply critical of many of the Romantics, including Schelling.”
“What was it he criticized?”
“Schelling as well as other Romantics had said that the deepest meaning of life lay in what they called the ‘world spirit.’ Hegel also uses the term ‘world spirit,’ but in a new sense. When Hegel talks of ‘world spirit’ or ‘world reason,’ he means the sum of human utterances, because only man has a ‘spirit.’
“In this sense, he can speak of the progress of world spirit throughout history. However, we must never forget that he is referring to human life, human thought, and human culture.”
“That makes this spirit much less spooky. It is not lying in wait anymore like a ‘slumbering intelligence’ in rocks and trees.”
“Now, you remember that Kant had talked about something he called ‘das Ding an sich.’ Although he denied that man could have any clear cognition of the innermost secrets of nature, he admitted that there exists a kind of unattainable ‘truth.’ Hegel said that ‘truth is subjective/ thus rejecting the existence of any ‘truth’ above or beyond human reason. All knowledge is human knowledge, he said.”
“He had to get the philosophers down to earth again, right?”
