380 becoming more human by becoming more godlikesuff erings of mortality, groundlessness, and insatiability, one that does
not depend on self- deception or require indiff erence.
Th e activities to which we are able to devote ourselves wholeheartedly
and single- mindedly suspend the sense of the passage of time and off er
us a temporary immortality. Th ey draw us into an experience that pro-
vides its own justifi cations and sets its own terms, without pretending
to off er a solution to the enigma of the world and of existence. Th ey
rivet desire, not to an object or even to a person but to an activity, in
which we are able to recognize ourselves as embodied spirit. Th ey
interrupt for a while the sad pro cession of longing, satiation, boredom,
and more longing. Th rough enthusiasm, the clock stops, experience ap-
pears to be self- validating, and the fulfi llment of desire seems to bring
empowerment rather than the belittlement of the self. What more could
we ask? Only for something we cannot have: that it last.
Enthusiasm is a virtue of purifi cation because it reproduces in its
internal structure the relation between our transcendence over context
and our receptiveness to the world. Th is relation forms a defi ning at-
tribute of the condition of embodied spirit. A mark of enthusiasm is its
liquefaction of the arrangements, ideas, or habits within which the en-
thusiast moves at the moment of enthusiasm; they appear as if dis-
solved under the heat of a visionary impulse. It is as if, for that moment,
the instruments and occasions of activity were fi nally adequate to its
intentions.
Th e seemingly paradoxical outcome of this incandescent dissolution
of the contrast between structure and vision is that we become rela-
tively more open to the impressions of some aspect of reality. Before
our enthusiasm, we saw through the lens, and acted at the behest, of the
structure, as if another person could take our place, in the same dumb
ser vice. Now, the scales are removed from our eyes. Or so it seems to us,
because we forget as it is happening that it amounts to a reprieve rather
than to a salvation.
Compare the sequel of enthusiasm to the legacy of moments of re-
foundation in politics. A reform of the po liti cal or economic regime,
typically adopted under the pressure of crisis, suspends or weakens
temporarily the power of the preexisting institutional arrangements.
To succeed, such a reform must leave a lasting institutional legacy. In
addition to changing part of the established institutional and ideological