becoming more human by becoming more godlike 377
problem of spirit and structure leaves its mark on the way in which we
reckon with the problem of self and others. Th e more we succeed in
ascending to a higher life, the less do these two domains of our expe-
rience appear to us as separate. We recognize them as two aspects of
the same movement.
With regard to our attachments, the most important form of courage
is the ac cep tance of a greater vulnerability, as indispensable to love as it
is unnecessary to altruism. Love cannot be sustained without a lowering
of the defensiveness through which we habitually confi rm our ambiva-
lence to others. To recognize and receive love requires an ac cep tance of
vulnerability no less than to off er love: in off ering it, we risk rebuff and
failure. In receiving it, we denude ourselves of part of the paraphernalia
of society and stand naked under the gaze of the other. A less radical
form of vulnerability is required, as well, by the higher forms of coop-
eration and by the varieties of community that are built on diff erence
and reciprocal engagement rather than on sameness and mimicry.
With respect to our re sis tance to circumstance and context, courage
begins in our willingness to defy the script that we are handed by the
established order of society or of thought, and to risk disillusionment
as well as isolation. Our ascent is incompatible with the security af-
forded by a posture of ironic distance from any demanding moral or
po liti cal faith. To the self- protection of irony, the courage required by
the religion of the future prefers the painful dialectic of faith and disil-
lusionment. Th is dialectic makes possible both self- discovery and dis-
covery of the world. It dissolves the routines and compromises that rob
us, little by little, of life.
It is by a similar practice of courage that we struggle against our
own character. Unable to change character by a direct act of will, we will
ourselves into circumstances that rob us of our shields. Th e overthrow
that I presented as the fi rst part of the religion of the future generalizes
the sense and scope of this struggle beyond the limits of the attempt to
loosen the bonds of the petrifi ed self. It requires us to face, without de-
nial or compensation, the truth about our mortality, groundlessness,
and insatiability and to seek the enhancement of life in their shadow.
It demands that we abandon our envy of the God in whom we have
ceased to believe. It requires that we distinguish, without illusion, our
part in the attributes of divinity.