humanizing the world 103From this perspective, any attempt to ground the realm of human
values in natural facts outside human life is self- defeating as well as
futile: it makes humanity subservient to something inhuman. Nihilism
about the world and the self- grounding of humanity are therefore not
opposites; on the contrary, they are complements. Humanity snatches
the crown away from the cosmos and puts it on itself.
Th e tragic aspect of this undertaking lies in the contradictions of the
social order rather than in the shadow cast by nihilism. Th e individual
is powerless to ensure the necessary self- grounding; only men and
women in society can achieve it through collective action. Th ey may
fail. Th e building and reproduction of a social order can fall victim to
forces that pervert interdependence and curtail social imagination,
because they disrespect the sanctity of the personal. Th en nihilism will
have its day. To avoid that outcome is the aim of this orientation to
existence.
Something, however, remains missing from this account: the cen-
terpiece of the po liti cal and moral strategy by which this goal is to be
achieved. To defi ne this strategy is the work of the third part of this
direction in the religious experience of mankind.
Th e ennoblement of our relations to one another
Th e third component of the humanization of the world is a view of
what can and should be the basic structure of our relations to one an-
other. Th e social division of labor is a system of social roles: the ste reo-
typical, regulated positions that individuals occupy in society serve as
platforms from which they deal with one another. If we are to human-
ize the social division of labor, and by extension the technical division
of labor, we must ensure that the per for mance of such roles vindicate
the sanctity of the personal. We must prevent people’s dependence on
one another from serving as the occasion for a barely contained war
over the basic terms of social life, in which only a self- interested reci-
procity attenuates the harshness of endless struggle.
An ethic of roles, of what we owe one another by virtue of playing
the parts that we do in society, is therefore the characteristic moral in-
strument of the project of humanization: the superior to the underling,