158 struggling with the worldrevolutionary orthodoxy of the struggle with the world. If this claim
is justifi ed, the argument about near emptiness and false content has
theological as well as philosophical force. Th e Kantian and historicist
views cannot be reconciled with the vision informing the struggle with
the world.
For the sacred versions of this approach to life, those most closely
associated with Christianity and with its sister religions of salvation,
the evils of the Kantian and historicist conceptions take on additional
meaning. Th e historicist denial of our power to hold the context to ac-
count represents a form of idolatry: it betrays the vocation of context-
transcending spirit. Th e ac cep tance of a theoretical altruism and uni-
versalism amounts to a Pharisaical evasion of our need— and of our
fear— of others, preferring blamelessness to love.
Th e doctrine of the two regimes might mistakenly be thought to
supply a response to the problem of our groundlessness. Th e sup-
posed response is that we ground ourselves. What we have in the end
are ourselves. We may ground ourselves by understanding and ac-
cepting the conditions and consequences of who we are, as revealed
by what we do (the Kantian version of the two regimes). Alternatively,
we may ground ourselves by recognizing and accepting our power to
create social and conceptual orders bearing the mark of our concerns
within a cosmos that is indiff erent to them (the historicist version of
the two regimes). Just as the anti- metaphysical metaphysics of the
humanization of the world teaches, we create meaning in a meaning-
less world.
But what if our grasp of this world- making or meaning- making power
of ours is corrupted, as the earlier argument about anti- naturalism and
arbitrariness has suggested, by anti- naturalism and arbitrariness? What
if our account of this power casts our self- grounding as a miraculous
exception to the workings of nature, and leaves us unable to reconcile
our understanding of ourselves as natural beings with our view of our-
selves as context- revising agents?
Th en the element of truth in the idea of self- grounding will have
been weakened rather than strengthened by its association with the il-
lusions of the doctrine of the two regimes. It will fall under the suspi-
cion of being part of our self- deceived attempt to claim for ourselves an
exemption from the natural order. We need no such exemption to make