Hart’s Withdrawal From the Presidential Campaign

In your article (May 10), “Hart Seems Devoted to Life of Contradictions,” you mention that Hart read Soren Kirkegaard’s great classic, “Purity of Heart,” which stresses that “purity of heart is to will one thing: to love God, and him alone.” However, it is advisable for anyone reading this great work to first read Kirkegaard’s work, “The Diary of a Seducer,” in which Kirkegaard describes seduction as one unproductive manifestation of the aesthetic stage of life.

This seducing phase only leads to “Sickness Unto Death,” described in Kirkegaard’s work of that name.

The aesthetic stage of life (see Kirkegaard’s “Stages on Life’s Way”), of which seducing people is one possible manifestation, is the lowest of the three stages, and must be overcome. The second stage, the ethical stage, also must be overcome, before one reaches the third and highest stage, the religious stage, achieved through a “leap of faith,” and producing “purity of heart--to will one thing: to love God and him alone.”

This is not to imply that Gary Hart really did seduce any women, but, like Jimmy Carter, we all may, at times, lust in our hearts at least.

HUGH W. WESTON

Palm Desert