The enterprise can of course be conceived abstractly as a series. Under this conception the paradigmatic example of enterprise is the articulation of an irrational number in floating point notation - pi, for example. The exact value pi is unknown to current human cognition, because it has an infinite number of digits, and we are only able to store a finite amount of them, even if this amount is enormous. Somewhere, on some computer, pi is becoming progressively more actualized as finite: they are calculating more and more digits. The finite number of articulated digits of pi increases, though its infinite number stays the same, a virtual Other hovering above its concrete expression, like the stoic lekta. But are all enterprises created equal? Are they all good? This lekton is the Transcendental Object, the object of ultimate concern, the nom-du-pere. But the pursuit of this object isn't enough in itself. There is a dimension of love that is crucial here, that seems to be lost in the tradition of French thought that otherwise is so profound in its ability to draw from psychoanalysis, hard science and dialectical materialism. Love. But what is love? I do know what it is - and I'm talking about the love that appears in the context of kerygma, the dao, whatever, the love that is humility and bliss. I don't know if I'm being totally articulate in saying this, but what I'm trying to say is profound and, I'm pretty sure, an unsolved problem: are creative originality and love actually compatible? I would like to believe that they are, but I have never experienced their union in the context of any living work of art (it is easy enough to find their union in Blake etc.). My experience of creative originality in the present is that it is inextricable from shame, order of rank, and a certain violence or exclusivity that simply is not compatible with the vulnerability and openness that goes along with love - because this openness is precisely the casting off of the airs that are essential to making new and daring art. Art treats these airs as a virtue and love treats them as a vice
[N.B. 2018 The arcanum ‘endeavor’ originally had the name ‘enterprise’]