390 becoming more human by becoming more godlikewe emerge and have our being. Th e discovery of the reality of indi-
vidual existence and of our failure to hold the center is therefore a
discovery of the facts of the matter about the world and of our place
within it.
Th is insight enters from the outset of our existence into the nature of
insatiability. In the human experience of insatiable desire, we can dis-
tinguish three elements. Th e fi rst element is the dynamic of privation,
want, satiation, boredom, and more want and privation. Th is dynamic
is modifi ed by our progressive understanding of how nature works,
which is in turn inseparable from our insight into how it can change, in
diff erent circumstances or as the result of diff erent interventions. Our
practical interests drive our cognitive development, which in turn both
informs and outreaches them. Because we are capable of relatively
disinterested insight, we can in such moments escape, temporarily, the
pressure of insatiable desire. Schopenhauer understood this capacity of
ours for the overcoming of the will in the contemplation of reality as a
form of salvation from the suff ering inherent in the restlessness of de-
sire. In fact, it can be no more than a temporary reprieve. Otherwise it
would sap the vigor of life and deny us its attributes of surfeit, fecun-
dity, and spontaneity. To be alive is to be insatiable; all the more insa-
tiable when more alive. “Th e world is not enough” is the motto of the
living.
A second element of insatiability arises from the contradictory and
ambivalent nature of our relations to other people, following directly
from the early discovery of our decentered selfh ood. Having found that
he is only one among many and that the consciousness of another per-
son is not only distinct from us but also all but inaccessible to us, we
long for ac cep tance and recognition of our worth and our very exis-
tence in the world. Th is desire is insatiable: it has no limit and can
never be completely satisfi ed. Every sign of ac cep tance and recognition,
even when supported and magnifi ed by love, is the token of a good that
can be delivered only with reservation, under the prospect of being
taken back. It represents a down payment on a transaction that can
never be completed.
Our limitless longing for what others can never completely give us
penetrates and modifi es the whole life of desire, even when the proxi-
mate objects of desire are things rather than people. We sometimes