360 becoming more human by becoming more godlikeTh e profane forms of the struggle with the world— the secular
programs of po liti cal and personal liberation— have oft en sought to
strengthen the will through an appeal to a historical providence occupy-
ing the place that divine providence holds in the salvation religions. Take
the example of Marxism, the most important intellectual infl uence on
the Left over the last hundred and fi ft y years. Th at history has a plan
might seem to reduce the will to nothing. Nevertheless, the belief that
history will work as an invincible ally of ours can excite the will to exer-
tions against obstacles that might otherwise seem insuperable.
Or consider romanticism. Th ere the illusion is that we can save
ourselves without having to change the structures of society and of
thought; one structure is as inimical to our humanity as another. Only
disruption, undertaken by individual or collective action (according to
the distinct programs of individualist and po liti cal romanticism), cre-
ates the interludes in which humanity can fl ourish. Disrupting the
structures will aff ord us at least a taste of undiminished existence.
Th e ideas informing these secular campaigns of emancipation do
not directly deny our mortality, groundlessness, and insatiability. Nev-
ertheless, they evoke a world of heroic po liti cal or personal action,
grounded only in itself, and wholly within the power of the will to
achieve. In this world, we can forget the truth of our circumstance. If
we are Marxist revolutionaries, for example, we can try to shift our fo-
cus from the dying individual to the relatively immortal species. If we
are romantics, we can hope to describe insatiability as adventure and
groundlessness as self- grounding. Only death will defeat our eff orts at
such re- description and require that we cope with it in the only way
that may, according to the romantic, be readily available to us: by a show
of power and of invulnerability.
Whether it is direct or indirect, the denial of the truth about our
circumstance taints with self- deception our struggle for a greater life.
Mystifi cation is too high a price to pay for the arousal of the will. In
every instance, it results in a mistake of direction, as the examples of
Marxism and romanticism suggest.
Th e second benefi t of the acknowledgement of our mortality, ground-
lessness, and insatiability is that it prevents the eff ort to come into a
fuller possession of life from degenerating into Prometheanism or
power worship. Th e sole reliable safeguard against our self- deifi cation