struggling with the world 141nomenon (as an image is the memory of a perception). Th e second
move is transformative variation: by making this move we grasp the
phenomenon from the perspective of proximate change: we progress in
understanding a state of aff airs by envisaging what it might become, in
diff erent circumstance or as a result of certain interventions. Imagina-
tion lift s the burden of a sullen and obscure facticity from the actual
world, the better to grasp it and to guide the transformative will.
A third example comes from the enigmas of experience rather than
from the or ga ni za tion of society or the practice of inquiry. It is an ex-
ample that later plays a central role in the criticism of the struggle with
the world but that here serves to illustrate the dialectic of engagement
and transcendence.
Look at the many societies in which the leading religious, moral, and
po liti cal beliefs are inspired by the sacred or the profane sides of the
struggle with the world. Almost all contemporary societies fall into this
group; even those that remain alien to the message of the Semitic mono-
the isms have been shaken by the promises and pretenses of democracy
and romanticism. Th e forms of ascent to a higher life that these religious
and secular projects describe place our hope in the future, whether it is
salvation through communion with God and eternal life, or the over-
coming of social oppression, or the discovery and development by the
ordinary man and woman of a full and complicated subjective life. We
are to become more godlike, if not be brought closer to God.
Th is message would fail to convert and convince if the future bless-
ing did not in some way transform our experience and strengthen right
now our spiritual or practical powers. Otherwise we would be forever
left grasping at a good that eludes us because it is placed in the future—
the historical or trans- historical future of humanity— rather than in the
sole reality that we possess: the present. So the orthodoxy of all these
beliefs must claim that we begin to be changed right now, and can re-
ceive in the present a foretaste of future salvation or empowerment if
only we direct our conduct and consciousness correctly.
Th e translation of future into present good, however, works only
imperfectly. Moreover, the circumstances of life under democracy fur-
ther excite our restless striving and make us dissatisfi ed with our pres-
ent condition. Neither the promises of eternal life, which even the most
faithful may doubt in their deathbeds, nor the prospect of a future