humanizing the world 117cius or Hume about human beings. Th e repre sen ta tion of humanity
will seem to be about some other being, not about us. It will lack the
complications and contradictions that foretell our higher calling and
make possible our ascent.Criticism: betrayal of the future
Th e humanization of the world off ers no useable point of departure for
the changes that deserve to be central to any future religious revolu-
tion. Two of its limitations render it incapable of serving this purpose.
One has to do with its response to the fl aws in existence; the other, with
its inadequacy as an antidote to the risks of belittlement.
A feature of the humanization of the world is its acknowledgement
of the facts of mortality and of groundlessness. However, it acknowl-
edges them only to turn decisively away from them to the construction
of a human order designed on our scale and according to our concerns.
Such is the strategy of the anti- metaphysical metaphysics: fi nding our-
selves in a cosmos that we can understand and master only minimally,
facing the certainty of annihilation, and denied insight into the ground
of being, we can nevertheless develop, within this inhuman world, a
world of our own.
Th e construction of such a humanized reality, devoted to the nur-
turing of role- based reciprocities, is also the only cure for our insatia-
bility. Our roving, unquenchable desires will be given form and direc-
tion by the rules and rituals of society. Unlimited desire will begin to
respect limits. Each of us will assume his station in the world and
attend, according to its dictates, to the needs of others, guided by grow-
ing insight into their experience. By serving others, we will be liberated
from ourselves, or rather from the insatiability that tormented us so
long as our self- centeredness remained uncorrected. Later, as we be-
come more virtuous, we will no longer need the crutch of rule and rit-
ual to be both at peace with ourselves and attentive to other people.
No approach to existence seems more modest or realistic in its atti-
tude to the failings in life. Th e consequence, however, of this movement
of aversion— the turning away from our unmanageable terrors to our
feasible tasks— is to deny us some of the means with which to awaken