religious revolution now 209among these beliefs is the understanding, in this approach to exis-
tence, of the relation between spirit and structure as well as between
self and others: the primacy of love, rather than of altruism, in the
development of moral experience, and the idea of the person as em-
bodied spirit, transcendent over all context or structure. Th ese views
have implications for both the conduct of life and the or ga ni za tion of
society. Moreover, they are informed by a partly inexplicit vision of
reality and of our place in the world. I enumerated the most impor-
tant elements of this vision: the singular existence of the world, the
inclusive reality of time, the possibility of the new, the openness of
history, the transgressing powers of the mind, the depth of the self,
and the superiority of the commonplace. In describing the main parts
of this vision, I also suggested the force of the re sis tance that to this
day they continue to encounter from prevailing beliefs about nature,
societ y, h istor y, a nd m i nd.
Th is re sis tance comes not only from dominant traditions of think-
ing about society and history (in classical social theory and contempo-
rary social science) but also from the most accepted interpretations of
what contemporary science has discovered about the workings of na-
ture. Th e ideas that there is only one world and within this world only
one regime, that time is real and that nothing, not even the laws of na-
ture, is exempt from it, and that novelty is not simply the exemplifi ca-
tion of possible states of aff airs waiting to happen, in the course of the
relentless enactment of deterministic and statistical causality, are all
propositions that continue to contradict widely held beliefs.
Th e other elements of the metaphysical background to the struggle
with the world, regarding society and the self, are even more central to
the message of the teachings of the struggle with the world, but they
receive even less support from prevailing ideas. Th ere is no established
understanding of society that teaches us how to think about the institu-
tional and ideological frameworks of our society and that recognizes
our power to change their content and character. Th ere is no settled
view of the mind that accounts for the work of the imagination. Th ere-
fore, as well, there is no comprehensive understanding of humanity
and history that enables us to place the dialectic of transcendence and
immanence squarely in our own constitution rather than to project it
onto the cosmos.