beyond wishful thinking 31•••
Prometheanism is what I call the most infl uential individualist re-
sponse to the evil of belittlement. Its core is the idea that the individual
can raise himself beyond the plane of ordinary existence in which the
mass of ordinary men and women allow themselves to be diminished.
He can do so by becoming the radical original that he already incho-
ately is and by turning his life into a work of art. To say that he turns his
life into a work of art is to affi rm that he raises it to a level of power and
radiance at which it becomes a source of values rather than a continual
exercise of conformity to values that are imposed on him by the con-
ventions and preconceptions of society.
As with the romance of the ascent of humanity, the text is reacting to
belittlement but the subtext is dealing with mortality. Prometheanism
beats the drums in the face of death. By exulting in his powers, above all
in his power to fashion himself and to become a creator of value, the
individual fails to achieve literal deathlessness; he remains condemned
to the annihilation of the body and of consciousness. Nevertheless, he
may hope to achieve the next best thing to immortality; he lives, among
men and women who remain below, on a lower rung of the ladder of
existential ascent, as if he were one of the immortal gods. Th e clearest
sign of this election— in truth, a self- election or a self- crowning—is
change in the experience of time. It is our absorption in activities that,
without denying our mortality and fi nitude, suspend for us the oppres-
sive passage of time. Th us, we have a taste of eternity without leaving
our mortal bodies.
I name this view Prometheanism by poetic license, for in so calling
it I do injustice to Prometheus. He stole fi re from heaven to give it to
humanity. Th ese Prometheans steal fi re to give it to themselves.
It is a position that was given voice by Nietz sche more than by any
other thinker. Rousseau and Emerson approached it, but never surren-
dered to it. Th e professors of philosophy now like to call it moral per-
fectionism, only to contrast what Henri Bergson called the morality
of aspiration to the morality of obligation. Both its insights and its
illusions escape them. Its revealed enemies are not the stunted ethics
of duty but rather conformity and belittlement. Its hidden enemy is
death.