110 humanizing the worldIf the criticism of its fi delity to the spirit of transcendence is the fi rst
objection to be made to the humanization of the world, as a response to
the concerns motivating the religious revolutions of the past, the sec-
ond objection is that it off ers too limited a justifi cation for the eff ort to
devalue or to overturn the social divisions within mankind.
Th e chief civilizing device of the humanization of the world, already
clearly stated in the Analects of Confucius, is the dialectic between the
roles, rules, and rituals of society and the development of our other-
oriented dispositions. Our induction into roles, rules, and rituals teaches
us to abandon our primitive self- centeredness. It begins to form, in
each of us, a nature turned to the experience and the aspirations of
others. Slowly, this now socialized nature of ours is elevated and even
transfi gured by the development of our ability to imagine other people.
Eventually, if we persist in this trajectory of moral ascent, that which
was conditioned by ritual and rule becomes spontaneous. Our obliga-
tions begin to converge with our inclinations; or, rather, our inclinations
discern, within and outside the rituals and rules, the path of ser vice to
others and of self- mastery.
“At 15, I set my heart on learning; at 30, I took a stand; at 40, I had no
illusions; at 50, I knew the Mandate of Heaven; at 60, my ear was at-
tuned to the truth; at 70, I followed my heart’s desire without overstep-
ping the bounds of right.” It is the specifi cally Confucian form of an
idea that two thousand years later, in the context not only of a diff erent
time but also of another vision, appears in the writings of, for example,
Émile Durkheim. For the spiritual orientations that I here discuss are
not simply evanescent tendencies of t hought, confi ned to isolated moral
teachers; they are lasting options in the spiritual experience of human-
ity, and they reappear in countless forms.
Th e principal setting of the dialectic between individual conscious-
ness and social form is the system of social roles. By assuming a role
and performing it according to its customary dictates, we continue our
passage from self- centeredness to society and reciprocity. By infusing
the per for mance of the role with the imagination of otherness and with
the spirit of humanity, formed in reverence of the personal, we enter, by
steps, into the possession of ourselves. Rules and rituals become a lad-
der that we can kick away.