84 overcoming the worldCriticism: betrayal of the future
Th e religion of the overcoming of the world was never capable of carry-
ing out the shared element in the program of past religious revolution.
Moreover, it could never be reconciled to the tenacious dispositions
and aspirations of humanity except through a deliberate dimming of
consciousness and vitality, undertaken in the futile quest to achieve
serenity through invulnerability. Similarly, it cannot serve as a starting
point for a future revolution in the religious aff airs of mankind that is
animated by the aim of lift ing humanity up, of enhancing its powers, of
intensifying its experience, of giving it a wider share in the attributes of
divinity, of acting on the principle that we can become better servants
of one another if we become greater masters of the structures of society
and of thought to which we habitually surrender our humanity.
At the heart of the program of this future religious revolution lies a
problem that is squarely presented by the third of the three world-
historical religious orientations— the struggle with the world— but that
is as foreign to the overcoming of the world as it is to the humanization
of the world. In posing this problem, I can rightly be accused of judging
one of these traditions by the standards of another. And so I do. I pro-
fess no neutrality among them. I claim for one of them an authority
that the other two have never gained, and can never hope to gain, in the
eyes of humankind: the authority that results from having helped in-
form and inspire the revolutionary projects that have shaken the world
in the last two centuries. Th ese projects fall into two main types: the
secular programs of emancipation (democracy, liberalism, and social-
ism) and the worldwide pop u lar romantic culture.
I later return to the question of the sense in which we have reason to
defend and to reinvent these projects. What, however, not even their
enemies will be able to deny is that these twin revolutionary mes-
sages have exerted an inf luence in the recent history of mankind
unparalleled in its reach. Th is message derives its power from its
promise to elevate human life for the many right now and to continue
doing so in the future. In their discourse, common humanity has iden-
tifi ed an off er— of recognition as well as empowerment— that it cannot
refuse.