This is, perhaps, what Rabbi Bernheim grasps when he says that “the similarity” between people and God begins “only in the association of the man and the woman and not in each one taken separately… The person is required to think beyond himself and to acknowledge the independent existence of an inaccessible other, that is, of one who is essentially related to oneself and desirable, yet never wholly comprehensible.” We only begin to understand the higher goods when we understand that we are not complete as individuals, that our fulfillment lies in the beloved who is both relatable and incomprehensible. As Jean- Luc Marion writes (following Augustine), “I experience myself insofar as I discover myself to be unintelligible to myself” (http://www.scribd.com/doc/23893365/Marion-Jean-Luc-The-Privilege-of-Unknowing).

What has perplexed me about all this is what can be said about ethics and politics if, following Marion, all this thinking about metaphysics and ontological difference just ends up in more self-referential idolatry. How do we determine the “higher goods,” which point towards God iconically, if “the residues of a Christian and Greek civilization” have been washed away such that there is no longer widespread public recognition of “the reality of goods of the soul?”

The only thing I can think of is that the encouragement of a culture that appreciates the “higher goods” can only come from the rejuvenation of just the kind of understanding of love that Rabbi Bernheim suggests here. Family and local relationships must be repaired, or at least emphasized inasmuch as they do exist, before there can be a political answer. Somewhat along the lines of Arendt’s argument about the security of rights only in communities that respect them, there needs to be a community that respects the excessive/ incomprehensible origin of the higher goods before they can be secure (is this the Church?). Maybe this is also one way of bridging the gap between the Porchers and the PoMoCons.