PYRRHUS AND CYNEAS
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philosophy created by a philosophic unfoldment which should be his
own. We wish in our individuality to be indispensable, and this we
only can be by means of individual projects. We are dependent on others'
liberty: they can forget us, misunderstand us, use us for aims which are
not our own. It is significant of the "trial" described by Kafka that no
verdict is ever closed, we live in a condition of indefinite compounding.
It is also indicated in M. Blanchot's epigram in
Aminadab:
The im–
portant thing is not to lose, but we never win. We have to undertake our
activities in uncertainty and risk and it is exactly there that the essence
of liberty lies; it is not decided by the grant of a post-dated salvation,
it is signatory to no pact with the future; if it could be defined by the
term envisaged it would no longer be liberty: but an aim is never a
term, it remains open upon the infinite; it is only an end because liberty
halts there and thus defines my individual being in the midst of formless
infinity. My concern is only to attain my end, the rest no longer concerns
me. What another will create, starting from me, will be his affair and not
mine. I only act in assuming the risks of this future; they are the obverse
of my finite existence and I am free in acknowledging my limitations.
So man can act and must act. He exists only in transcending himself.
By risks and defeats he acts. The risk he has to take; in flinging himself
towards the uncertainty of the future, he establishes with certainty the
present. But the defeat cannot be assumed.
(Translated from the French by Christopher Freemantle)
