He became a lieutenant in the Nazis’ Wehrmacht, commanding tanks and infantrymen. He arrived in Berkeley in his early thirties, got tenure, then had a full 1960s conversion. Empirical proof and rationalism had nothing on irrational subjective belief. “It dawned on me,” he wrote in a kind of memoir called Farewell to Reason, “that the intricate arguments and the wonderful stories I had so far told to my more or less sophisticated audience might just be dreams, reflections of the conceit of a small group who had succeeded in enslaving everyone else with their ideas. Who was I to tell these
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