372 becoming more human by becoming more godlikefeverish and uncontainable degree in our relations to other people. Our
unspoken apprehension of this truth is manifest in our ambivalence to
the others, from whom we seek, and know already that we are unable
to obtain, what matters most.
Th e third element missing from that conception of our bonds to
other people is insight into the implications of the relation between the
two problems that have been central to thinking about life in the tradi-
tion of the struggle with the world: the problem of self and others and
the problem of spirit and structure. What ever belittles us, by turning us
into the pawns and puppets of an established order of society and of
culture, or into prisoners of our characters, also diminishes the depth
and value of our attachments.
We cannot recognize and accept one another in love and in a com-
munity of diff erence, or work with one another in the higher forms of
cooperation, if we have failed to turn the tables on context and charac-
ter, and to give practical eff ect to the idea of embodied spirit. Th e exer-
cise of our power of transcendence suff uses and transforms our experi-
ence of solidarity; our longing for the infi nite sets an indelible mark
upon our longing for one another. Th e weakening of our powers of tran-
scendence over context, of society and of thought, saps as well our abil-
ity to soft en the confl ict between our need for other people and our re-
sis tance to the jeopardy in which they place us.
For these reasons, we should not understand the virtues of connec-
tion, as the Greeks and the Romans did and the moral phi los o phers
continue to do, as simple restraints upon selfi shness: the habits of a re-
fl ective altruist. We should understand them in the light of the compli-
cations that are inseparable from their place and potential in moral ex-
perience. To this end, we must borrow the words of pagan moral
philosophy but stretch and bend their meaning.
Th e fi rst of the virtues of connection is respect. Respect is best un-
derstood as the recognition of our common humanity: our sharing in
the condition of embodied spirit. Such an ac know ledg ment remains
incomplete until it is penetrated by imagination of the subjective expe-
rience of other people. Th e development of such an experience, as many
of the religions of the past— Confucianism fi rst among them— have
understood, represents one of the highest tasks of civilization. It is, in
par tic u lar, the work of the humanities.