The Brothers Grimm tell the story of a fisherman and his wife who encounter a magical, wish-granting fish. The couple wish at first for a nicer home but soon grow to be dissatisfied with the house they’re given and need, as an alternative, for a castle. Because the charm of every recent wish wears off, the couple’s demands grow an increasing number of extreme until, finally, considered one of them wishes to grow to be like God. With this, the fish loses patience, and the couple are sent back to their little hut.
David McPherson uses this tale in his book, The Virtues of Limits, to precise the open-endedness of human desire, which culminates in an effort to “play God.” For McPherson, we human beings have a alternative between two fundamental attitudes toward life and the world. Are we “appreciative and accepting” or “selecting and controlling”? While each are obligatory features of any human life, McPherson argues, our lives as individuals and communities change radically based on which attitude we deem primary.
This volume is slim but wide-ranging. At fewer than 160 pages, it touches on existential, political, moral and economic questions. McPherson argues that this “accepting and appreciating” stance has implications for all realms of ethical considering. This proves to be a robust frame through which to view a number of problems.
The book begins with the excellence between “appreciating” and “controlling.” The primary attitude starts with the world and the second starts with my will. The paradigmatic example of this will-based approach for McPherson is Friedrich Nietzsche, who sees the aim of human life as imposing one’s will and growing in autonomy. However the Nietszchean view, McPherson argues, is absolutely a non-starter. If there may be nothing objectively worthy of willing, why will anything in any respect? All that’s left is to easily go together with whatever I occur to desire, but to take these desires as our authentic selves is to risk becoming slaves to passions, lusts, greed, hunger for power and so forth.
The duty of morality is to position limits on our desires and our wills such that they accord with the given structures of the world and human nature.
The duty of morality, then, is to position limits on our desires and our wills such that they accord with the given structures of the world and human nature. The master virtue on this regard, it seems, is humility, which recognizes that I didn’t make myself nor this world that I inhabit. I don’t stand in relation to myself or to the world as lord and master, but as one receiving a present. This results in the second virtue: gratitude. These two virtues allow us to perceive properly the worth of things; just as necessary, they permit us to feel at home on the earth.
This posture of acceptance doesn’t mean we should always not right wrongs or cure ills, but that we should always not place our desires above the world as given to us. McPherson illustrates this across a wide selection of domains. In bioethics, as an example, nobody would object to a recent treatment for cancer; still we should be concerned concerning the idea of genetically engineering our youngsters. To dismiss any concern would lack a correct stance of humility before the dignity of human life and would invite the treatment of the human person as a consumer good.
In his section “Moral Limits,” McPherson applies his lens of limits to a choice of contemporary ethical debates. Amongst these is the controversy over universalism and particularism, which has relevance for our concerns about globalism and nationalism. Universalism normally signifies that all persons are to be given equal and impartial moral consideration, while particularism argues that our relationships to particular individuals affect the character of our moral obligations. A universalist might say that there isn’t any reason why the suffering of somebody in my town should receive more consideration than that of somebody on the opposite side of the world. In spite of everything, each are human. A particularist, however, would say that naturally I actually have a greater moral obligation to my actual neighbor than to a random person overseas.
On the extremes, universalism neglects my concrete responsibilities to those near me for abstract humanitarianism, while particularism results in chauvinism or nationalism. McPherson charts a middle path. He argues that the philosophy of limits recognizes that our sphere of most vital moral responsibility is proscribed to those that are literally “there” in our lives while still holding that in themselves, all people have equal dignity. This is a component of what he terms “humane localism.”
This theme of humane localism runs through the section on “Political Limits,” where McPherson combines this concept of localism with the thought of accepting imperfection. He is particularly intent on arguing against utopianism, which in his view risks injuring necessary human goods in its quest for perfection. An effort to radically equalize economic status, as an example, would potentially impinge on significant and non-negative types of human freedom. Reasonably than obliging us to level differences, justice requires that we pursue the humbler goal of ensuring that everyone seems to be sufficiently provided for.
Lest one think that the acceptance of imperfection and inequality makes McPherson merely a proponent of capitalism, the section “Economic Limits” reveals he’s just as concerned concerning the lack of limiting virtues available in the market economy as he’s about addressing this deficiency in government. Against a perfect of unlimited economic growth and wealth accumulation, he argues for “contentment” because the counter-virtue to the vice of greed. Economic freedom, like human freedom, must be oriented to the common good and to a conception of a great human life.
Like Wendell Berry, McPherson wants an economy that’s defined more by the flourishing of home and family life than by the profits of a handful of powerful corporations.
McPherson’s book is guided by the spirit of Wendell Berry, with an argument for an economy that respects the boundaries placed on us by the health of our surroundings and the integrity of our ecosystem, in addition to by the health of our communities. McPherson suggests a necessity for “economic decentralization,” where dispersed ownership of resources and capital is obligatory for healthy market competition. He, like Berry, wants an economy that’s defined more by the flourishing of home and family life than by the profits of a handful of powerful corporations.
The book concludes by making a case for the practice of the sabbath. Just as our moral investigations, our life projects and our work must begin by properly appreciating the world and life which can be given to us, they need to also end with appreciation. The goal of our moral, political and economic efforts is actually a type of celebration of life lived fully and well. This, and never Nietzsche’s understanding, is the actual “yes-saying” to the world; it’s the path, as McPherson says, to “being at home on the earth.”
Readers may possibly differ here and there with McPherson on particular questions of economics, justice or government. Still, the worth of the lens of “limits” for our moral and philosophical investigations is evident throughout. The book stands as a rebuke to points of each the left and right of our political and cultural divides. More necessary, it offers a lovely alternative in the shape of embracing the world as a present with humility. Doing so, we will hope, might give us a greater respect for individuals, the environment and human nature.
The Virtues of Limits is written in a way that’s accessible to the non-philosopher and shall be of interest to many. It is going to provide much food for reflection and contemplation for any reader engaged within the grander questions of our moral, economic and political life. A few of the arguments he addresses would have done well with further treatment, but, at the identical time, the book’s breadth serves to present the reader a way of the flexibility of limits as a lens.
Returning to the story of the magical fish: Joseph Ratzinger, in his Introduction to Christianity, writes that the error of Adam and Eve is just not that they desired to be like God, but that they considered like God meant merely to grow to be powerful—to grow to be masters of the universe. The truth is, to grow to be like God is to be in a relationship of affection and self-gift. For Christians, to grow to be like God is even to grow to be humble and a servant to all. This true “becoming like God” is a substitute for the “playing God” that concerns McPherson. Perhaps that is the lesson of the fairy tale.
For Christians, God is the suffering servant, the lover of humankind and the lover of the world. To grow to be like God, then, is just not unlike assuming the stance of affection and appreciation that defines the sabbath. Those that should not Christian, McPherson argues, can still see the worth in this concept of goodness. We would consider the creator himself as a philosophical fish attempting to remind us, just like the couple within the story, that human happiness doesn’t lie within the unlimited success of our desires, but in our proper relationship to the gift of life.
