156 struggling with the worldwhich we place one another and our consequent radical ambivalence to
one another. We master this contradiction, and attenuate this ambiva-
lence, not by a high- handed benevolence but by love in the circle of in-
timacy and by cooperative activity outside this circle. In practice, the
bare- bones content of this ethical formalism and universalism is com-
plemented by its hidden subtext. Th is subtext is the passive ac cep-
tance of the established system of social roles and of the obligations to
one another that, in any one society and culture, we are conventionally
deemed to have by virtue of occupying certain social roles.
In the po liti cal philosophy conforming to the same model, a theo-
retical egalitarianism (the po liti cal counterpart to a theoretical altru-
ism) is complemented by ac cep tance of the established institutional
structure of society as the horizon within which the egalitarian ideal is
to be realized. Th e practical residue of this combination of theoretical
egalitarianism and institutional conservatism is the justifi cation of
compensatory redistribution by tax and transfer, and more generally of
conservative social democracy, as the outer horizon of the progressive
transformation of society. So, too, the practical residue of the combina-
tion of theoretical altruism with acquiescence in the conventional mo-
rality of established social roles is the embrace of a disinterested benig-
nity, off ered in the middle distance of social life, as the best that we can
hope to give one another.
Th e historicist version of the doctrine of the two regimes supplies
what appears at fi rst to be a very diff erent way of thinking about our
moral and po liti cal direction. It teaches that we can fi nd guidance solely
by engagement in par tic u lar contexts and traditions. We can judge them
only by their own standards, or, at the extreme, by the standards of an-
other form of life: a diff erent social and cultural world. Beyond these
par tic u lar worlds and the modes of judgment that they support, there
is emptiness.
Th is view, however, misrepresents the relation of the self to the social
and conceptual regimes that it inhabits. Th ese contexts make him, but
they can never completely imprison or exhaust him. Th ere is always
more in him— more potential of experience, discovery, connection, and
creation— than there is, or ever can be, in them. Moreover, we can
change, cumulatively, their character as well as their content, dimin-
ishing the extent to which they present themselves to us as natural facts
rather than as human artifacts.