ABSTRACT
An object of rational hope can continue as such only so long as its fulfillment seems really possible. Ontology can expand or contract hopes, precisely by way of expanding or contracting sense of what is really possible. One of the highest purposes ever conceived for one’s embodiment, and hence for one’s existence, is to manifest the quality of one’s will, then by way of one’s appropriate guilt and repentance in the face of that manifestation to come to deepen one’s will’s orientation toward the good, and eventually to approach the condition of holiness in which one’s willing is just the relevant circumstantial expression of the good. The antecedent conditions of reasoning include specifications of rational contents or reasons presented in an embodiment and specifications of already embodied acts. Philosophers differ over how much of reality one has to survey to determine whether a being has a moral status.
