humanizing the world 109mind with ideas about society and its reconstruction, they do justice to
neither. Th ey then fail fully to vindicate the idea of embodied spirit.
Th ey leave the claim of our powers of transcendence undeveloped, un-
grounded, and, above all, lacking in a vision of what to do.
Consider, as an example, a view of the mind that, in a contemporary
vocabulary, exemplifi es the idea of the person as embodied spirit. Th e
mind has a dual character. In some respects, it is like a machine, made
up of modular parts and operating according to formula. In other re-
spects, it is an anti- machine, equipped with the power to overstep its
own settled methods and presuppositions.
Th e relative power of this anti- machine, which we call the imagina-
tion, is not shaped solely by physical features of the brain, such as its
plasticity. It depends, also and even chiefl y , o n t h e o r g a n i z a t i o n o f s o c i -
ety and culture. Th is or ga ni za tion may widen or narrow the space for
the workings of the imagination, and aff ord it or deny it equipment.
For this reason, the history of politics is internal to the history of the
mind.
Any such vision of our radical transcendence, with or without belief
in the encounter between God and mankind, is alien to the humaniza-
tion of the world. It relies on ideas about us and our place in the world
that contradict the assumptions of this tradition of thought and recom-
mend rejecting the moral and po liti cal attitudes it favors.
Without the support of some such vision, the idea of the sacred char-
acter of personal connection remains a weak basis for an ideal of tran-
scendence. We do not experience personality and personal encounter
in a social and historical vacuum. We experience them in a setting
prepared for us by the history of a par tic u lar society. Will it be our pur-
pose to reinvent this template or merely to improve it; to make it serve
our ascent to a higher form of life or to content ourselves with a modi-
cum of success in diminishing its cruelties? Will we nurture the hope
of at last making ourselves at home in a social world transformed by
our enhanced ability to imagine the experience of other people and to
attend to their needs, according to the social stations of each person, or
will we come to see such a desire to settle down in a humanized society
as a betrayal of our nature and vocation? By the answers that the hu-
manization of the world gives to these questions, it shows that it has
only a diminished version of transcendence to off er.