“Individualism includes a dangerous mythology at its heart; taken to an extreme, it can reap destruction for individual persons, families, institutions and society. Something essential to our humanity, especially the values and virtues of the communal, is at high risk in this pursuit; it can lead to social failure and personal loss, cynicism
and even despair. As a way of life, it constitutes an abstraction that hollows out the self, emptying life of some of its balance and richness. One’s identity can actually become quite brittle and fragile in this attempt to escape accountability and soar with the eagles. There can be a serious form of escape amidst the brilliance and creativity, and even a move towards a soulless existence.”
[There emerges] a dislocation in the relational order: when they aspire to be more than human, they actually become less than human....We often find the radical conception of freedom as absolute and unlimited lies at the heart of many of the most dehumanizing tendencies...in modern history. Where freedom is seen as radically self-constituted, responsibility is restricted to the responsibility of agents to themselves, and it is at this point that the claim of radical autonomy cannot be distinguished from the escape into unaccountability. (Schwöbel, 1995, pp. 73-74)
Theomania, the desire to be like a god, is real (or surreal) and has worked its ruin. Schwöbel notes that there is an interesting historical-cultural co-incidence between the birth of radical concept of freedom and the denial of God in Western philosophy (1995, pp. 72-75). He suggests that it results from humans attempting the kind of freedom one normally attributes to God—omniscient, omnipotent, infinite. This perspective on freedom tends to imply that the self must occupy or usurp the space once given to God in Western consciousness—human and divine freedom in a strange way are set up in a direct conflict and competition
and even despair. As a way of life, it constitutes an abstraction that hollows out the self, emptying life of some of its balance and richness. One’s identity can actually become quite brittle and fragile in this attempt to escape accountability and soar with the eagles. There can be a serious form of escape amidst the brilliance and creativity, and even a move towards a soulless existence.”
[There emerges] a dislocation in the relational order: when they aspire to be more than human, they actually become less than human....We often find the radical conception of freedom as absolute and unlimited lies at the heart of many of the most dehumanizing tendencies...in modern history. Where freedom is seen as radically self-constituted, responsibility is restricted to the responsibility of agents to themselves, and it is at this point that the claim of radical autonomy cannot be distinguished from the escape into unaccountability. (Schwöbel, 1995, pp. 73-74)
Theomania, the desire to be like a god, is real (or surreal) and has worked its ruin. Schwöbel notes that there is an interesting historical-cultural co-incidence between the birth of radical concept of freedom and the denial of God in Western philosophy (1995, pp. 72-75). He suggests that it results from humans attempting the kind of freedom one normally attributes to God—omniscient, omnipotent, infinite. This perspective on freedom tends to imply that the self must occupy or usurp the space once given to God in Western consciousness—human and divine freedom in a strange way are set up in a direct conflict and competition