Paul Feyerabend telegrafiert an Rudolf Kaehr

http://www.thinkartlab.com/Feyerabend/Feyerabend-Telegram.htm

Paul Feyerabend’s (last) Telegram

6-page telegram from Paul Feyerabend (London) to Rolf Kaehr (Westberlin)

09.12.68 at 14 20

Telegram-1

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

cannot give what

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

Copyright 1968/2004 Rudolf Kaehr, ThinkArt Lab, Glasgow