I want to live a long life so as to be able to experience and reflect upon this bizarre predicament from every humanly possible temporal perspective. For each age of life has its characteristic insights and illusions. Youth has its truth as midlife its crisis, a crisis risible to the man ten years beyond it: "What the hell was that all about?" And as the years roll on, and the fire down below subsides, certain insights become possible which were not before.
The owl of Minerva spreads its wings at dusk. That's true both phylogenetically, as Hegel intended it, but also ontogenetically. And as I once heard Gadamer say, Die Erntejahren eines Gelehrten kommen spät. "A scholar's harvest years come late."
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