Perfection: Coming to Terms with Being Human

1. Coming to Terms with Perfection

1 chapter one Coming to terms with perfection Have you ever perceived perfection in yourself, in others, in human inventions and artistic creations, in the workings of nature? At the moment of discovery, some change in consciousness , in perception and thought, likely occurred that moved your attention away from its habitual and routine involvements in the everyday world and toward something else at work in this world that was particularly captivating and special. The experience could be as simple as walking outside your home at dusk to do some chore (e.g., sweeping the patio), glancing up at the sky for a moment, and responding silently: “Good God, look at that sunset. Beautiful.” God, nature, beauty, and silence are known to work together to stimulate experiences of at least some degree of perfection. The experience feels good. The feeling helps to cultivate a passion for perfection. This passion plays a fundamental role in our social and political lives as we attempt to sustain and advance the progress we have achieved in the struggle to survive, understand the world, be better persons, and live the good life. Our passion for perfection is admirable; it defines who we are as metaphysical animals, creatures who have a longing, a nostalgia, for security, comfort, and completeness in our lives. 2 • Perfection This same passion is humbling, too. The eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume put it this way: a human being “can form an idea of perfections much beyond what he has experience of in himself; and is not limited in his conception of wisdom and virtue. He can easily exalt his notions and conceive a degree of knowledge, which, when compared with his own, will make the latter appear very contemptible.” Our passion for perfection not only speaks of potentially great things to come but also puts us in our place. “Man falls much more short of perfect wisdom, and even of his own ideas of perfect wisdom, than animals do of man; yet the latter difference is so considerable , that nothing but a comparison with the former can make it appear of little moment.”1 Hume speaks of a truth of human being that is quite telling in what it discloses about our species. No matter how great and important we think ourselves to be, we are still animals, fallible creatures fated to fall short of ever having it “all together.” Perhaps such human imperfection was on Hume’s mind when, while considering the debate over the morality of suicide and how “God-fearing” souls used their ultimate understanding of perfection to decry the sinfulness of this final act, he claimed that “the life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.”2 Still, the passion for perfection persists. Its impulse permeates the very fabric of language that allows us to think and talk about whatever this passion (or anything else) may truly be. As the social and literary critic Kenneth Burke notes, “The mere desire to name something by its ‘proper’ name, or to speak a language in its distinctive ways, is intrinsically ‘perfectionist.’ What is more ‘perfectionist’ in essence than the impulse, when one is in dire need of something, to so state this need that one in effect ‘defines’ the situation?”3 Like any author who has a truth to tell to an audience and who wants this truth to be thought provoking, influential , and memorable, Hume had to be concerned with finding the most appropriate, convincing, and effective way of expressing himself about the matter at hand. This rhetorical task calls for an appreciation of “eloquence,” a phenomenon that Hume praised as being essential for the well-being of any civil society Coming to Terms with Perfection • 3 that values freedom and that is bent on achieving genuine social, political, and moral progress. For Hume, eloquence is “the rapid harmony [of discourse], exactly adjusted to the sense: It is vehement reasoning, without any appearance of art: It is disdain , anger, boldness, freedom, involved in a continued stream of argument. . . . The principles of every passion, and of every sentiment, is in every man; and when touched properly [by eloquence ], they rise to life, and warm the heart, and convey that satisfaction, by which a work of genius is distinguished from the adulterate beauties of a capricious wit and fancy.”4 Eloquence is rhetoric functioning wisely, as perfectly as possible, in helping...