384 becoming more human by becoming more godlikean insuperable gap remains between the fatefulness of the commitment
and the adequacy of the grounds on which we may make it. Th e grounds
are always immeasurably weak by comparison to the signifi cance of
their object. Wait only a little, we may say to time, while I inquire fur-
ther, as if more time would enable us to conclude. Follow the objective
morality, teach the moral phi los o phers, as if the juxtaposition of their
empty abstractions with their arbitrary casuistry could provide any
guidance in the conduct of life.
We can strive to learn from experience, and to revise our commit-
ment accordingly. However, we deceive ourselves if we suppose that this
cumulative refl ection brings us any closer to a conclusive justifi cation
of our choice. Th e failure of our reasons to bear the weight of the choice
of a course of life refl ects, in the formation of our core beliefs, the ground-
lessness of existence.
We must not only accept this daunting imbalance between commit-
ment and reason but accept as well the fi rst consequence of inade-
quately grounded commitment: that we place ourselves in the hands of
others. Th e defi cit of reason is supplied by society: the shared beliefs
informing all our initiatives. All our activities take the form of incom-
plete contracts, reliant upon premises that are at once shared and inex-
plicit. Like every incomplete contract, they award discretion and power
to other people: those with whom we must cooperate in the collective
spiritual and practical endeavors that give sense and direction to our
lives.
Th e fi rst virtue of divinization is to accept the risk and the vulnera-
bility that this disproportion between our life commitments and their
grounds entails and to respond to this disproportion by moving toward
life rather than away from it: more engagement, more connection, more
commitment, more risk, more vulnerability. It is to prefer the life- giving
dialectic of faith, disillusionment, and revised faith to the life- narrowing
posture of ironic distance and self- protection. Th e result manifests
itself in the cultivation of a hopeful and patient availability: availabil-
ity to this dialectic and to the suff ering that it exacts.
Openness to the other person and openness to the new are the other
two virtues of divinization. As courage is an enabling virtue with re-
spect to all the virtues, our ac cep tance of a heightened vulnerability to
the risks of attachment and engagement serves as the enabler of this