Gary, it seems to me that you are at odds with EJ about a short life being
fulfilled in
spite of its brevity because his Erkenntnisinteresse, his motive for asking his
questions
and probing the answers, is different from yours. He seeks meaning and sense in
death, you
refuse to see meaning anywhere else than in the visible achievements a human
being brings
about during his lifetime. Another important factor determining EJ's
Erkenntnisinteresse
might be his sheer age. It is old men who tend to say, "Wie es auch sei, das
Leben, es ist
gut", as Goethe wrote when he was 74, and he meant life in general, not only
his own, which
was, certainly by your criteria, a fulfilled one even before he wrote those
lines. Günter R.
