164 struggling with the worldAs a result, they trade understanding for the rationalization of the exis-
tent, and deliver themselves to what the historian of modern Eu ro pe an
philosophy describes as right- wing Hegelianism.
Th e counterpart to the notion of a defi nitive structure of social life
in the self- understanding of philosophy is the view of philosophy as a
superscience, Hegel’s idea of absolute knowledge: thought, even if in-
completely formulated, no longer confronts insuperable contradictions
between its methods and the truths that there are to explore. It is not
necessary for knowledge to be absolute that it be complete, only that all
confl ict between insight and practice be at last resolved. Although such
a claim, stated as it was by Hegel in ostentatious and metaphysical
form, may seem extravagant, it is in fact the pretense of the university
culture, with its craven reifi cation of the methods of each discipline and
its hostility to what ever problems and ideas these methods and disci-
plines are powerless to grasp.
Th e Hegelian heresy denies a truth central to the struggle with the
world in all its variants, sacred or profane: the truth of the dialectic
between circumstance and transcendence. Described in the language
of the sacred form of the struggle with the world, its spiritual defect is
idolatry. Under its infl uence, we carry over to a defective and ephem-
eral human arrangement some part of the unconditional devotion that
we owe only to God— and to his presence within ourselves. Veneration
for the law, especially as developed within Judaism and Islam, can turn
into an idolatrous perversion. Th e law may cease to be a bridge between
the human and the divine. Instead it may become both a proxy for God
and an incitement to a freezing of the social order.
Described in the language of the secular form of the struggle with
the world, the harm done by the Hegelian heresy is the abandonment of
our power, interests, and ideals to the stranglehold of an institutional
formula, misrepresented as adequate but in fact fl awed, ramshackle,
and accidental, as all institutional formulas are. Th e result is to interrupt
the back- and- forth between the way in which we shape and understand
our interests and ideals and the way in which we form and grasp our
institutions and practices. Th e development of our powers always de-
pends on this dialectic.
At the time when this book was written, the whole world stood in
the shadow of a restrictive set of institutional options for the or ga ni za-