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ArgumentThe wisdom of the boundary
Wisdom is neither to accept everything nor to want to change everything, but to know how to tell the one from the other.
Supports Knowing the difference
- The shared fault of the two extremes is to fix the boundary of the possible in advance: too narrow for the Stoic, who files almost everything under the inevitable; nonexistent for the Promethean, who admits no final limit.
- Yet this boundary is neither given once and for all nor the same everywhere: it depends on circumstances, on forces, on the moment. Wisdom is therefore not a fixed position, but a judgment to be taken up case by case about what, here and now, depends on me.
- This faculty of deliberating well about what one can do, the ancients called : not timidity, but the art of fitting action to what the situation allows. To act with energy on the possible, to accept without bitterness the irreducible, this is what it aims at.
Therefore So the right path is not halfway between the two wisdoms, but above them: it is discernment that decides, at each ordeal, the share of action and the share of acceptance.
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Deepenings
Serenity, courage, and wisdom
- A prayer attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr fixed this wisdom in a formula since become famous, which may be rendered thus: the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can be, and the wisdom to tell the difference.
- The whole effort lies in the last word: the difference is never given in advance, it is for each of us to draw it, again and again.
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Put to the test
Objection
Problem