untitled

204 religious revolution now

corrupted by its pretense to succeed religion. It is tempted by the illu-

sion that if only we think more clearly and more deeply, we can solve

the enigma of existence. We cannot solve it. To affi rm that we cannot is

the beginning rather than the end of the religion of the future.

Resolving the ambivalence of the higher religions

to the transformation of the world

A license to escape the existing social world or an invitation to change
it: such has been the two- sided ticket that each of the three major ap-
proaches to existence that I earlier addressed has off ered to mankind.
When these orientations devalue the authority and deny the ultimate
reality of the divisions within humanity, it is never clear whether this
devaluation and denial imply another way of representing society or
another way of or ga niz ing it. A fi rst point of departure for the religion
of the future is to resolve this ambiguity in favor of changing the world:
a par tic u lar direction of change of the self and of society supporting
our ascent to a greater life.
Confucianism may seem exempt from the desire to escape the world
by virtue of its commitment to reshape society on the model of our role-
based and ritual- supported obligations to one another. Yet it establishes
an inner sanctum of our experience of personality and of personal en-
counter, enhanced by awareness of the needs of others. Th is experience is
meant to serve as its own reward and to off er to the best an asylum
against the degradations of society. Th e ability to imagine the experience
of other people and to fulfi ll, in the light of this understanding, our re-
sponsibilities to them can then seem more important than any par tic u lar
institutional reshaping of society, other than the respect for socially ac-
knowledged merit that is closely connected to a morality of roles.
Our modern projects of social reconstruction and personal
liberation— the secular versions of the struggle with the world— appear
to resolve the ambivalence between escape and transformation in favor
of the latter. However, they abandon their eff ort to change the world
when they despair, as they repeatedly have, of the attempt to recon-
struct society and to re orient the self and make peace with an estab-
lished order of society and culture.