door.”
“That’s for luck.”
“But it is only a superstition, and Newton was anything but superstitious.
When someone asked him if he really believed in that kind of thing, he said,
‘No, I don’t, but I’m told it works anyway.’ “
“Amazing.”
“But his answer was quite dialectical, a contradiction in terms, almost.
Niels Bohr, who, like our own Norwegian poet Vinje, was known for his
ambivalence, once said: There are two kinds of truths. There are the
superficial truths, the opposite of which are obviously wrong. But there are
also the profound truths, whose op-posites are equally right.”
“What kind of truths can they be?”
“If I say life is short, for example . . .”
“I would agree.”
“But on another occasion I could throw open my arms and say life is
long.”
“You’re right. That’s also true, in a sense.”
“Finally I’ll give you an example of how a dialectic tension can result in a
spontaneous act which leads to a sudden change.”
“Yes, do.”
“Imagine a young girl who always answers her mother with Yes, Mom ...
Okay, Mom ... As you wish, Mom ... At once, Mom.”
“Gives me the shudders!”
“Finally the girl’s mother gets absolutely maddened by her daughter’s
overobedience, and shouts: Stop being such a goody-goody! And the girl
answers: Okay, Mom.”
“I would have slapped her.”
“Perhaps. But what would you have done if the girl had answered
instead: But I wonf to be a goody-goody?”
“That would have been an odd answer. Maybe I would have slapped her
anyway.”
“In other words, the situation was deadlocked. The dialectic tension had
come to a point where something had to happen.”
“Like a slap in the face?”
“A final aspect of Hegel’s philosophy needs to be mentioned here.”
“I’m listening.”
“Do you remember how we said that the Romantics were individualists?”
“The path of mystery leads inwards ...”
“This individualism also met its negation, or opposite, in Hegel’s
philosophy. Hegel emphasized what he called the ‘objective’ powers. Among
such powers, Hegel emphasized the importance of the family, civil society,
and the state. You might say that Hegel was somewhat skeptical of the
individual. He believed that the individual was an organic part of the
community. Reason, or ‘world spirit/ came to light first and foremost in the
interplay of people.”
“Explain that more clearly, please!”
“Reason manifests itself above all in language. And a language is
something we are born into. The Norwegian language manages quite well
without Mr. Hansen, but Mr. Hansen cannot manage without Norwegian. It is
thus not the individual who forms the language, it is the language which forms