212 RüdigerKunow
aged"arehereusedininvertedcommas,ifitisnotaltogetheravoidedin
favorofthelessladenterm"latelife."^55
I would like to begin my reflections with the proposition that the
conceptualantinomiescontainedbetweenyoungand"old"areeffective,
ideological ways of "world making" which are often invested with
strong emotions.^56 Moreover, such a making is articulated not in
absolute disjunction but instead by more or less direct reference to the
conceptual opposite in an essentially dialectical relationship. It always
takestwotoage.In"OldAge"(1862),Emersonshowedthathealready
knew that "as long as he is alone by himself, he is not sensible to the
inroads of time... and if we did not find the reflection of ourselves in
theeyesofthe young people,wecould notknow thatthe century-clock
had struck seventy times instead of twenty" (n. pag.). Another way of
speaking of such relatedness is to reflect on its dialectical nature, to
which I have repeatedly alluded already in my discussion of
Canguilhem's book. In the present context, it is Hegel's famous
discussion of language in thePhenomenologythat is helpful. In Hegel's
view, the individual subject, "this particular 'I'" can only express itself
by losing itself, abandoning itself to the universal medium of
language—"its manifesting is also at once the externalization and
vanishing of this particular 'I'" (Phenomenology of Spirit309). And in
the famous master/slave dialectic of recognition, the coming to self-
consciousnessofbothcontendersdependsontheirrecognitionofandby
the polar other, seeing "its own self in the other" (Phenomenology of
Spirit111).Evenwhileallduerespectneedstobepaidtotheconceptual
and material differences that separate I from non-I, master from slave,
and Hegel's philosophy in general from the cultural critical interests of
thisbook,theideaofanecessaryinterrelatednessofthebinaryopposites
old and young, even of their mutual dependence, is in my view
(^55) Someofthereasonsformyuseof"latelife"are,again,terminological."Age"
refers to many concepts: to lifetime, time in general, to periods and epochs (the
AgeofReason,forexample).
(^56) The term is Nelson Goodman's who uses it to describe comprehensive
versions of the world (whose existence Goodman, in contradiction to
postmodern [Lyotard] and poststructuralist [Derrida] relativism, does not deny).
Examples are the helio- or geocentric worldviews or Einstein's theory of
relativity.