becoming more human by becoming more godlike 421Th e third point of contradiction is the ambivalence shadowing our
relations with one another. Love passes into hatred; hatred, into love.
Th e eff ort to put a fi x on this ambivalence, to control it under a formula
of character, society, or thought, is an enterprise that can achieve a
semblance of serenity and peace only by suppressing the enhancement
and the expression of life. Th e solution, to the extent that a solution ex-
ists, is the raising up of the self, through the cumulative eff ect of the
virtues of connection, of purifi cation, and of divinization. Th is raising
up must take place against the background of the higher forms of coop-
eration, if possible, and without that background, if necessary.
Th e ideal of a virtuoso of role- based reciprocity who achieves, through
self- cultivation and self- restraint, an inclusive benevolence, confi dent in
his own nobility and reconciled both to society and to himself, contra-
dicts the vision inspiring re sis tance to the mummy in the hope of dying
only once.
Th ese arguments about the inadequacy of overcoming the world and of
humanizing it as bases for our triumph over mummifi cation lead into a
positive view: a view of the characteristics of a life that is able to avert
the threat of mummifi cation. A life characterized by the aims invoked by
these arguments will have certain marks. Th ese marks are so intimately
connected that they are best seen as diff erent aspects of the same way of
living. Any one of them taken in isolation invites misinterpretation.
Th eir signifi cance and their reach become clear in the light of their re-
lation to one another. To achieve them is both a goal of our striving and
a confi rmation of our success.
Th ey fail to yield a system of rules. Th en, again, the codifi cation of
our moral ideas in a system of rules is an enterprise alien to this way of
thinking. When such rules or principles are not empty and powerless
to provide guidance in the conduct of life, they have all too much con-
tent and stand as surrogates for the tasks of self and social transforma-
tion that should lie at the center of our concerns.
A fi rst mark of this way of living is that it manifest a disposition to
resist the hardening of the self in the form of character. Th is disposition
can also be described as the eff ort to form a character that remains to
the end open to the possibilities of life and to the promptings of expe-
rience. What is such a character, or anti- character, like? It exhibits a