Nothing is more human than discontent with the human condition. And few aspects of human life inspire more discontent than politics. The longing to withdraw from, escape, or transcend the vicissitudes of political life in favor of a more perfect world permeates Western culture from ancient times to our own, though the responses to it have taken many forms. For Plato, the philosophical life enables a man to leave behind the imperfections of politics—with its harsh necessities, imperatives of self-defense, worldly ambition, violence, and craving for power—to pursue the higher justice supposedly embodied in rational reflection. Similarly, the Stoics believed that heroic acts of virtue could protect the virtuous man from the nastiness that so often prevails in political life. Others, by contrast, have denied the possibility of transcendence altogether. For these Epicureans, sophists, and skeptics, our only option is reconciliation to worldly limitations.
Things are different still for believing Jews and Christians, who offer yet another interpretation of human discontent. On the one hand, the world is a “vale of tears.” On the other, there is a promise of redemption from, and even the redemption of, the world by a Messiah who will “wipe away every tear” from our eyes. Transcendence, then, is possible, but it awaits us in a future we lack the power to make present. The Judeo-Christian tradition thus synthesizes apocalyptic yearn ing with stark realism about the obstacles to its satis faction. If recurring Gnostic and messianic heresies testify to the precariousness of this synthesis, its relative stability and persistence over the millennia demonstrates, equally well, its remarkable resilience.
