32 beyond wishful thinkingAccordingly, the overt defect of Prometheanism is its denial of the
claims of solidarity in the making of the self. No man makes himself.
We are made by the grace of others, through connection with them, in
every realm of existence. Because every connection threatens us with
loss of freedom and of distinction, even as it may give us the self that
we have, or can develop, our dealings with others are fraught with an
inescapable ambivalence, the other side of the mimetic character of
desire.
Th e idea that the triumph of the individual over belittlement must
take place against the backdrop of a distinction between a small num-
ber who become artifi cers of their own lives and creators of value and a
hapless mass that sinks back into conformity and enslavement entan-
gles the winners as well as the losers, the powerful as well as the power-
less, in anxious vigilance to uphold or to undermine the arrangements
of this dominion.
Th e specifi c nature and consequence of such a denial of our depen-
dence upon others becomes clear when we compare Prometheanism to
its precursor in the history of moral sensibility, the heroic ethic, presti-
gious and even predominant, in the cruder form of an ethos of martial
valor and self- assertion, in many of the societies in which the present
world religions arose. Th e hero imagines himself ennobled by a task of
indisputable worth, oft en requiring the commission of acts of violence
prohibited within the confi nes of normal social life. It is a theme retaken,
in the romantic vision, by the artist in bourgeois society, who subverts
the ideals and attitudes supporting the established social regime.
Th e hero fl atters himself that his preeminent worth results directly
from such acts rather than from the approval of his nonheroic fellows.
In this belief, he is deceived. Th e heroic task is designed by them and for
their benefi t. His craving for their approval and admiration is aroused
rather than assuaged by the extremity of his actions.
Prometheans imagine that they can solve this problem in the heroic
ethic by becoming the inventors of their own selves and thus as well of
their own values and tasks. In so thinking and acting, however, they
fail to acknowledge the inability of the individual to make or to rescue
himself, and the contradiction between the enabling conditions of self-
assertion. Th ey also disregard the empty and mimetic character of de-
sire, and the limitations of any attempt to overcome it.