False subjectivity has led to nihilism. To combat the nihilism of modernity, Levin says that we need to challenge the “timeless” Cartesian self by affirming a “self open to changes in itself; a self which changes in response to changes in the world; a self capable of changing the conditions of its world according to need.” In short, “I am not what I am and I am what I am not.”
That last sentence seems to me a fine way of stating the Protestant doctrine of justification. And I cannot see how Levin’s is/is not self can be anything but another, more intense form of nihilism, unless it is an eschatologically shaped doctrine of justification. That is: I am declared to be, and therefore I am , what I’m not yet.
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