6-page telegram from Paul Feyerabend (London) to Rolf Kaehr (Westberlin)
I am ill. Please let the seminar continue in my absence. Inform Prof
Landmann and Prof Huebner, cancel the hotel reservation and read the
following final message to my class on tuesday 1pm: I am sorry that I
would have been my last lecture to you. In this lecture I would have
elaborated on Verons argument and would have tried to show that it also
excludes consience, selfexpression, iedntification. Turning back to the
empiricist methodology and demand for theoretical unification I would have
shown how these two elements gave first, to a clearly defined and
theoretically unobjectionable concept of witchcraft and then to systematic
methods for the elimination of the wicked. It was the combined search for a
coherent truth and for a simple good that was responsible for the
death of hundreds of thousands of innoncent people. Is it not advisable to
once and for all cut the ground from underneath such excesses? Is it not
better to have a patchwork of vague and rambling suggestions rather than
a beautiful and coherent theoretical system? Is it
not better to be unsystematic and not to accept any one of the demands
of theoretical excellence defended today? This is my question to you.
And now thank for your kind interest in my unsystematic sermons,
special thanks to the pretty girls who were and added
motive for making these sermons as entertaining as possible and always
remember CohnBendit who says that "The revolution must be born of joy and
not of sacrifice" Paul Feyerabend