HANS MORGENTHAU AND ETHEL PERSON
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taken as an immutable feature of psychological life. But, as Jacob
Burkhardt argued, the rediscovery of self was a phenomenon of the
Renaissance. In the Middle Ages, man was "conscious of himself only
as a member of a race, people, party, family or corporation-only
through some general category." In particular, religion provided man
with a meaningful universe in which he had a meaningful place.
Taking into account his existential alienation, too glaring to be argued
away, religion promised man salvation in the future, either in another
world where he would be rewarded and punished justly and where he
would overcome his present fallibilities in a new incarnation, or in this
world made whole by the coming of the Messiah. The gradual
dissolution of the classical theological and philosophical systems and
the concomitant outburst of individual creativity in art, literature,
politics, and science in the Renaissance appeared to provide empirical
proof of man 's ability to overcome alienation through his own autono–
mous efforts. Since the Renaissance, the cult of individuality has been
at one and the same time both the glory of western civilization and one
of its disintegrative elements.
It
is because of the cult of individuality that the problem of
alienation is particularly complex in western civilization . Here, man is
set apart from both the beasts and the gods by the contrast between
what he is and what he wants to be. His aspiration transcends the
limits of his ability. A pig is a pig is a pig and, we can assume, wants to
be nothing else. A god by definition attained the perfection of good–
ness, wisdom, and power; there is nothing to be aspired to beyond that
perfection. It is reserved for man to seek more than his nature allows
him to have.
It is the awareness of this existential gap between aspiration and
attainable realization that is at the root of the existential alienation that
all men, but post-Renaissance western man in particular, experiences.
He is a child of nature, but the gift of consciousness prevents him from
being nothing but that. He has been created in the image of God, but
not with the divine attributes of perfection. The gap between man, on
the one hand, nature and divinity, on the other, cannot be bridged. It
cannot be eliminated without depriving man of his human nature.
Thus man is condemned by his own nature to hang forever suspended
between heaven and earth, forever striving in vain to join one to the
other. He is driven by his own aspiration toward unattainable goals.
But it is his very nature that. renders these goals unattainable, hence
Faustian man 's alienation from himself.
Contemporary alienation is no longer capable of falling back
upon theological or metaphysical structures mitigating or denying the
