humanizing the world 107point of contrast between the religions and philosophies that exem-
plify the three orientations to life considered here and the beliefs that
they replaced. Th e second respect in which the humanization of the
world fails to do justice to the shared element in the religious revolu-
tions of the past has to do with its attitude to social division and
hierarchy.
Th e assertion of transcendence— of the transcendence of the divine
or the sacred over nature and society as well as of our human powers to
transcend the circumstances in which we fi nd ourselves— remains in-
secure within this approach to existence. Nothing in its anti- metaphysica l
metaphysics or in its naturalistic moral psychology provides an ade-
quate basis on which to affi rm our power to resist and overcome the
social and conceptual regimes in which we fi nd ourselves enmeshed.
For the Semitic mono the isms, the chief instance of the struggle with
the world before the rise of the modern secular projects of po liti cal or
personal emancipation, transcendence takes the unmistakable form of
the separation of God from the world. Th e problem then becomes how
this chasm, once opened up, is to be bridged: through some countervail-
ing embodiment of the divine in humanity and in history. For Buddhism
or its precursors in the metaphysics of the Vedas, transcendence lies in
the superior reality of hidden and unifi ed being, viewed in relation to
the phenomenal and temporal world.
For Confucianism, as the most infl uential example of humanizing
the world, our power of transcendence over circumstance and presup-
position, if it has any meaning or force, has as its seat the experience of
the personal and of personal encounter, viewed in relation to every-
thing else. What is most real and valuable about this experience lies in
a web of relations to others; the personal to be nurtured and revered is
the interpersonal.
Th e sacrosanct experience of the personal stands in contrast primar-
ily to dark nature, which we must master and turn to our purposes but
cannot hope to fathom. Secondarily, it remains opposed to the regime
of society, which deserves our allegiance only insofar as it respects and
sustains this sacred core of existence. Th e spirit of the interpersonal
has, for Confucianism, its consummate expression in jen: the quality of
self- expression and self- formation that is expressed in both sympathy
and detachment.