becoming more human by becoming more godlike 423and should deal with one another in diff erent domains of social life.
Th e social role contains the regime and the vision within itself. To ac-
cept it is to accept them. Such an ac cep tance represents a denial of the
most important fact about our relation to these structures of society
and culture: that we exceed, in power and reach, these collective cre-
ations of ours and cease to be fully human and alive if we take them as
an absolute frame of reference for our striving and thinking.
What this fact implies for our per for mance of the conventional roles
that are available to us is that we can neither disregard the standards
with which such roles are associated and the expectations to which
they give rise, as if they had no moral weight, nor take those standards
and expectations as defi nitive of our obligations to one another and to
ourselves. Th ere is no formula by which to balance these competing
considerations. Th ere is, however, a sliding scale. Th e more the social
and cultural regime from which the system of roles emerges expresses
the principles of deep freedom and supports the higher forms of coop-
eration, the greater is the authority that we have reason to give to role-
based standards and expectations.
An implication of the falsehood of the Hegelian heresy— belief in a
defi nitive structure able to accommodate all the experience and activ-
ity that we have reason to value— is that at no point along this sliding
scale should we give in wholly to the script that comes with the role. No
social and cultural order deserves unqualifi ed credit. None suppresses
the need for prophetic vision— not just for the grand visions of a few
inspired and exceptional individuals but also for the small epiphanies
of which any reasonably fortunate human life is full. Whether great or
small, vision requires defi ance, whereas the system of roles exists for
the reproduction of an established social world.
To a greater or lesser extent, we must tear up the script. We cannot
do so without disappointing others, who rely on that script. With roles,
and with the claims that they generate, go loyalties. In defying roles, we
signify our intention to put under stress the loyalties with which they
are associated. We do so up to the limit of personal betrayal, which
we must risk crossing when we set out on a defi ant and transformative
course.
We must perform the roles that exist while enlisting them in the
ser vice of ends that they were never designed to support. We must