On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books

by Karen Swallow Prior

the theological virtue of hope is manifested not merely in eternity, but in the implications of eternity for present realities74—in other words, here and now in the relationship of the transcendent to the immanent. Only in the immanent can we as embodied creatures encounter transcendence. Transcendence meets human needs, one moral philosopher argues, only when understood “as a person—as a Thou.”75 Modern secular apocalypses—those that reveal a telos, or end, apart from the transcendent meaning and purpose—express even so a yearning “for Revelation—to make the deep pain and difficulties of our lives meaningful and finished.”76 In the absence of a “Thou,” the best a secular apocalypse can offer is a “thou.”