from a letter
personally, i've never decided anything on this question of existence being intrinsically tragic. in fact i've argued against it in the past, but it wasn't a good argument... :) it's just such a hard issue. i will still say my usual mantra 'if everything is tragic, nothing is,' so, generally speaking, i'm more on board with merleau-ponty in how he talked about fundamental ambiguity. the insight that things can *really* go either way is important to me and it actually works great with the notion of superfluous evil. however, i'm going to contradict myself a bit--only apparently though--by telling you one thing i suddenly understood with full clarity this year: yes, ambiguity sounds about right, as does the roll of the die, but most of it is already pre-determined by one's condition in its most material aspects. there's no roll of the die, no ambiguity for those who are already fucked, to put it simply... i shall leave it at that for now.