358 becoming more human by becoming more godlikemany alternative visions that their convergence or consistency is of no
value in bringing us closer to the truth about the ground of existence.
At the end of our eff orts, we fi nd ourselves as distant from the prize
as we were at the beginning. At fi rst exhausted and frightened but then
schooled in the indiff erence bred by our dimmed awareness of the
world, we may embrace one of the handy accounts of the ground of
existence that have been ceaselessly generated in the history of religion
and of philosophy. Once, however, we reject the consolations of this
false grounding, as delusional and cowardly and as incompatible with
our struggle for a greater life, we face, defenseless, the enigmatic nature
of our existence.
Th at we must face it in the shadow of death ensures that we cannot
console ourselves by hoping for a later revelation. Th e constraint of
mortality closes the circle around us, imparting to our existence and to
its darkness their decisive concentration.
Th e third terror that we must experience is the unlimited character
of our desires. We want, especially of one another, more than the world
or any living person can give. We want the impossible: the absolute
represented in the fi nite. Of one another, we want the assurance of an
unconditional place in the world. We want diff erence and union at the
same time.
Th e restlessness of desire appears at fi rst in the rhythms of wanting,
satiation, boredom, and more wanting. It acquires a frenzied quality in
obsession and addiction. It becomes vast in our desire for one another
and sets an indelible mark on our erotic life.
It has oft en been said that this view of desire and of love is an inven-
tion of Christianity, remade by romanticism. Only in the cultures that
have been penetrated by these beliefs, according to this view, is the desire
for the absolute combined with desire for another person, with the result
of arousing an expectation that real people and societies cannot meet.
Christianity and romanticism, however, opened a road to the dis-
covery of the nature of the self as embodied spirit: the context- bound
and context- transcending person. Everything in the history of belief
and of politics works in the same direction: the development and deep-
ening of selfh ood turns deepened selves into objects of unlimited po-
tency, fascination, and danger for one another and arouses the hope of
forming attachments in which we can soft en the confl ict between the