Saltar para: Posts [1], Pesquisa e Arquivos [2]
Mark T. Mitchell, Roots, Limits, and Love:
«In a world where limits are seen as an affront, a willingness to accept limits seems to represent a retreat from the freedom of unfettered autonomy. Yet, most humans throughout history have been aware of and willing to submit to social, natural, and divine limits. We are bound by conventions that provide meaning and context to particular human communities. We are bound by norms rooted in nature that inform us, if we pay attention, to ways that humans can flourish in an uncertain world. We are bound by commands of God who is the ultimate source of all good things.
When we properly conceive of place and limits, our understanding of liberty will be constituted in a way that is both sustainable and liberating. While the autonomous individual seeks absolute freedom but unwittingly promotes the growth of the centralized state, a person deeply committed to a particular place and willing to acknowledge the many ways humans are limited, will, ironically find that liberty emerges in the wake of these commitments. A liberty worthy of human beings is one where individuals act freely in pursuit of goods that can only be realized in the context of a healthy, human-scaled community. In other words, only when human lives are oriented to local communities can a sustainable and rich conception of liberty be secured.
To pay lip service to liberty but to denigrate particular places and to shun limits is to undermine the possibility of liberty itself. Only when those claiming to be conservative re-commit themselves to their places and willingly submit to the limits that are proper to human beings will their pursuit of liberty have a chance of lasting success.»