humanizing the world 113to establish a social order that remains untainted by the alienness of
nature and casts back to us our own refl ection.
Something of that alien quality will enter into our experience of so-
ciety. If we contrive to drive it out, the price will be our surrender to the
established regime. Th is surrender will be qualifi ed only by the improv-
ing humanistic initiatives, and the consequent denial of what matters
most about our humanity.
Th e relativity of the contrast between the meaningful order of civili-
zation and its meaningless natural setting is, however, not simply a
problem; it is also a solution of sorts. It provides a minimal basis on
which to rebel against the established regime and its claim to represent,
or to prefi gure, the defi nitive context of social life. Th e anti- metaphysical
metaphysic of the humanization of the world is incapable of grasping
this truth. To do so would be fundamentally to change its view of the
human condition and its message about both politics and morals.
Criticism: the school of experience
A second set of criticisms of the humanization of the world has to do
with the realism of its moral psychology: its prospect of enticing men
and women to conform to its assumptions and proposals. Th ere are
again two key respects in which this tradition of thought fails to do
justice to what we are really like, or can become. Its failures of insight
into human nature compromise the authority of its po liti cal and moral
recommendations. Each of these failures has to do with a major aspect
of existence: our relation to the established arrangements of society and
the prevailing dogmas of culture as well as our dealings with our fellow
human beings.
In making these complaints, I do not proceed neutrally in the dis-
pute among the major spiritual orientations explored in this book. I
appeal to ideas that have been historically associated with the struggle
with the world. It is not this association that gives those ideas their au-
thority; it is the testimony of what we have learned about self, society,
and history. For the ideas are also intimately connected with what
imaginative literature and social and historical study have taught us
about ourselves over the last few centuries. No one schooled in the