Moral Limits

This chapter discusses moral limits. In a broad sense of “moral,” which is concerned with how we ought to live our lives, each of the limits explored in this book can be regarded as involving moral limits. But this chapter focuses on traditional areas of concern for moral philosophers. The first section discusses the issue of character formation and how this properly begins from learning to acknowledge restraints on our desires, which enables us to become the best of all animals, rather than the worst, that is, it enables us to become fully human (in the sense of realizing a normative ideal for humanity). The section focuses on the limiting virtues of reverence (as expressed through manners) and moderation, and it draws on Confucian and Aristotelian ethics. The next two sections are primarily concerned to argue against consequentialist forms of ethics. The second section argues in favor of absolute prohibitions by appealing again to the limiting virtue of reverence, and it critiques other proposed bases for such prohibitions. The third and final section then considers what we positively owe others in terms of assistance. While it maintains that we should have concern for all human beings qua human beings, it discusses how the limiting virtues of neighborliness (a form of human solidarity that recognizes the moral significance of proximity) and loyalty place constraints on what we can be asked to do on behalf of others.