194 struggling with the worldthem by a cult of sheer force, from the preservation and strengthening
of the body to the steeling of the will against outward circumstance.
Th is search for invulnerability— or for less vulnerability— to our
weakness deprives us of the chief instrument by which we can over-
throw the shell of routine and compromise that begins to form around
us (the mummy within which we die many small deaths): unfl inching
confrontation with the truth of our circumstance as the death- bound,
groundless, and insatiable beings that we are. It thus prevents us from
exercising the prerogative of life and from overcoming, through its ex-
ercise, our estrangement from the present moment. Th e power worship
of the Promethean amounts to a travesty of the enhancement of life.
Th e Promethean may answer that his search for empowerment is
nothing other than the dialectic of engagement and transcendence, which
we must reaffi rm to become more godlike and more human, even as we
attempt to overcome our estrangement from the present. It amounts,
however, to an empty impersonation of that dialectic. Th e focus of tran-
scendence falls on the revision and reconstruction of an established
structure of life or of thought. Th e emphasis of Prometheanism lies in
winning power within that structure. What counts for the Promethean is
not that the structure be changed in content or character but rather that
it not grind him down. His hope, whether disclosed or disguised, is to
claim an exemption from its force rather than to serve as the agent of its
remaking.
Such power expresses itself in lording over other people as well as in
triumph over the infi rmities of the body. What chiefl y concerns the
would- be Prometheus is that he become strong. He may have allies
and companions in this eff ort to overcome weakness and vulnerabil-
ity. However, he mea sures his success by comparing it to the relative
failure of others.
Th e Prometheus of Greek mythology stole fi re from the gods to give
it to humanity. Th e Prometheus of our modern history has as his fi rst
ambition to slow, if he cannot escape, the fall to decline and death, the
fate of being annihilated and forgotten, and its foreshadowing in the
daily humiliations to which an ordinary human life is subject. By be-
coming strong and powerful, he hopes to possess a life greater than
that which others live, if he cannot have life eternal. In this respect and
on its surface, his eff ort may seem to off er a parallel to the revolution