Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Conference
'Supererogation'
University College Dublin, 4-6 June 2014
Abstracts
Keith Ansell-Pearson, University of Warwick
Beyond Obligation? Life and Ethics in Guyau.
In this paper I explore the ideas of the neglected modern French philosopher, Jean-Marie Guyau (1854-88) as
they concern conceiving an ethics beyond obligation and duty. I approach Guyau as part of a French tradition of
an ethics of generosity and whose most famous exponent is Bergson. I aim to highlight Guyau's principal
concerns and the novelty of his insights, as well as illuminate his attempt to ground ethics within a thinking of
'life'. I deal with three main topics: the criticism of a Kantian ethics of duty; the criticism of an ethics based on
hedonism; and the rapport that can be established between Guyau and Nietzsche. My main focus, however, shall
be on bringing to light the novel character of Guyau's approach to an ethics beyond duty and evaluating it.
Alfred Archer, University of Edinburgh
Supererogation, Sacrifice and The Limits of Duty.
It is often claimed that all acts of supererogation involve sacrifice. The reason this claim is made is that it is
thought that it is the level of sacrifice involved that prevents these acts from being morally required. My primary
aim in this paper is to argue against this claim. I will start by making a distinction between two ways of
understanding the claim that all acts of supererogation involve sacrifice. The first is as an overall cost to the
agent’s self-interest and the second as a cost to the agent that is not directly made up for or replaced. I will argue
that there is good reason to think that supererogation need not involve either kind of sacrifice.
Marcia Baron, St. Andrews, and Indiana University Bloomington.
A Kantian Take on the Supererogatory.
This paper presents an alternative to the mainstream approach in ethics concerning the phenomena that are
widely thought to require a category of the supererogatory. My view is that the phenomena do not require this
category, and that we can do them justice for the most part via the category of (Kantian style) imperfect duties.
Elsewhere I have written on Kant on this topic, and have examined Hill’s attempts to show that Kant does have
a place in his theory for supererogatory acts. Here I shift my focus away from interpretive issues and consider
the pro’s and con’s of the Kantian approach to what we generally think of as supererogatory acts. Why might
one find it unsatisfactory? What background assumptions would lean one to favor the Kantian approach and
what sorts would lean one to favor the mainstream approach? I also consider the possibility that although the
category of the supererogatory is only necessary for moral theory and for thinking about morality if one accepts
the assumptions I enumerate (and which, I suggest, there is no need to accept), it might nonetheless be the case
that in institutional contexts, there is a need for the category of the supererogatory. Here, it seems, we do need to
know what we really have to do and what is beyond the call of duty; in this context, however, duty is not the
Kantian moral notion, but rather is pegged to particular roles, or to the needs of the institution or group or club
of which one is a member. But even here, I argue, much (though not all) of the work for which the notion of the
supererogatory may seem to be crucial is better handled by the classification of imperfect duties.
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Claire Benn, University of Cambridge
Supererogatory Spandrels
The ‘good-ought tie-up’, a thesis that denies that there can be any actions that are both good and optional,
provides a challenge to the possibility of supererogatory actions, which are by definition both good and
optional. Those who wish to establish the possibility of supererogatory actions must reject the good-ought tieup. This is often done by appealing to the value of supererogatory actions. I argue that such an appeal is unlikely
to convince those sceptical about supererogation and gives the false impression that supererogation is a concept
that has few implications for other aspects of our ethical theory. Instead, I argue that many cases of
supererogatory action should be thought of as ‘spandrels’: as by-products of relatively uncontroversial
assumptions in other areas of moral thought. By identifying these cases of supererogatory spandrels, I
demonstrate that ethicists need not be committed supererogationists in order to be committed to the possibility
of supererogatory actions.
Stephanie Bransfield-Garth, University of Cambridge
Redefining the Extraordinary: A practical approach to supererogation
This paper addresses the deep definitional problems regarding supererogation. The complex nature of the
interplay between duty and value which underpins supererogation is investigated as is the role of moral
motivation. A new necessary condition is proposed – the maxim of aspiration - which delineates the
supererogatory as a subset of ordinary morality through the use of aspiration. This allows consistent separation
of extraordinary voluntary acts from those that are merely very good but not compulsory; and further allows
separation of normal moral agents who may supererogate from modern day moral saints and vigilantes. The
proposed maxim therefore provides an innovative contribution to the literature on what it means to
supererogate, and to be a supererogator.
Matthias Brinkmann, University of Oxford
Imperfect Duties and Supererogation
In this paper, I will defend an account of supererogation that explains supererogation entirely within a threetiered deontic framework, i.e., which uses no other categories than those of the required, the permissible, and the
forbidden. The basic idea is that the latitude one is allowed in fulfilling an imperfect duty accounts for
supererogation: if I am required to do x or y, doing x and y is a candidate for, though not necessarily,
supererogation. I argue that this approach can combine the strengths of approaches which see supererogation as
a category sui generis, and those that deny the existence of supererogation tout court.
Justin Caouette and David Boutland, University of Calgary
Denying the Usefulness of Suberogatory and Supererogatory Act Distinctions
Julia Driver has argued (1992) for a set of actions that she claims illuminates some ethical problems that arise
by using only the traditional moral concepts of morally permissible, morally wrong, and morally obligatory: she
dubs such acts “suberogatory” acts. Suberogatory acts, she argues, are not impermissible but nonetheless seem
to be morally amiss; “they are bad to do, but not forbidden” (ibid. p. 286). Driver argues that such actions,
though morally permissible, are difficult to capture without the suberogatory distinction. One way that she
motivates why such an act distinction is fruitful is by appealing to a parallel distinction between obligatory and
supererogatory acts brought out in the work of J.O. Urmson’s ‘Saints and Heroes’ (1958). Supererogatory
actions have been described as actions that “go beyond the call” of what is morally required for an agent in a
given scenario. In this paper, we argue that classifying acts as either suberogatory or supererogatory serves to
only further muddy the ethical waters. An ethical system that adopts the use of such terms not only obscures our
common understanding of what it means to be morally permissible but also must admit to being incomplete and
morally ineffectual, failing to provide the normative guidance central to ethical theorizing. By showing how our
traditional moral concepts can account for the ethical problems that such act distinctions were supposed to
illuminate, we argue that we should refrain from importing the suberogatory and supererogatory distinctions
because doing so not only obscures what it means for something to be morally permissible but also makes moral
progress more difficult to achieve.
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Elizabeth Drummond Young, University of Edinburgh
Sacrifice and Supererogation
Supererogatory acts are thought to be optional because they are costly for the agent to perform. I argue firstly;
that costs do not justify the optionality of supererogatory acts, and secondly; that by accepting that costs justify
optionally good acts in this way, we end up impoverishing the characterisation of supererogation as a whole. I
suggest that the intuitive attraction of the ‘appeal to costs’ account of supererogation has much in common with
attitudes towards religious sacrifice, as traditionally conceived, where the emphasis is on giving up something or
someone of value in order to make the appropriate sacrifice. I propose a new interpretation of Christian
sacrifice, following the account of Robert Daly S.J. If this interpretation is transferred to morality, it means that
we can interpret supererogatory acts as voluntary acts of self – offering love, rather than the overcoming of frail
human nature by a few heroes and saints.
Michael Ferry, Spring Hill College, USA
Beyond Obligation: Reasons, Demands and Supererogation
Supererogation poses a serious problem for theories of moral reasoning, and I argue this problem results, in part,
from our taking too narrow a view of the reasons that can influence an act’s deontic status. We tend to focus
primarily on those reasons that count directly for and against an act’s performance. To adequately account for
supererogation, I argue we should consider also those reasons that govern the attitudes we express in response to
moral acts as well as our practices of issuing demands and of seeking justification in the case of an omission.
Attending to these sorts of reasons will allow us to distinguish prescriptive moral oughts from moral obligations
and in turn, to accept that, while the supererogatory omission does involve a moral failure of sorts, it does not
involve a failure of obligation. Thus we can account for our intuitions regarding supererogation (and so allow
for options in the face of admitted value) while avoiding what I call the problem of supererogation, the problem
of explaining how it is permissible to omit the supererogatory act and to perform what we take to be a morally
worse act instead.
Miranda Fricker, University of Sheffield
Transcendent Forgiveness and the Value of Affirmation
Writers on forgiveness have often concentrated on the idea of earning forgiveness through the redemptive power
of remorse and perhaps apology. Others have argued it is better understood as an inevitably undeserved gift.
Perhaps both kinds of forgiveness—earned and unearned—can be found in our moral lives. What they share is
that they are both to be understood in relation to a system of moral desert, or moral justice. Moral justice is
surely essential to the reflective moral life; still, I would like to explore the idea that equally essential to the
reflective moral life, is a third possibility: a kind of forgiveness that is neither deserved nor undeserved, for it is
expressive of a moral stance that stands altogether outside the economy of moral desert and so transcends the
forgiveness of Moral Justice. We might call it Transcendent Forgiveness.
Jessy Giroux, University of Toronto
Supererogation and the Unity of the Normative Domain
In this paper, I present a new way of unifying normative language. Following Moore in Principia Ethica, I
propose to reduce deontic concepts to evaluative ones. I defend this new model and show how it differs from
Moore's own model, and I then show how the model can succeed where others have failed: it can account for the
phenomenon of supererogation. I conclude by showing how my model can account for other categories of
action, such as "suberogatory" actions.
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Simone Grigoletto, University of Padova
Why Proximity Matters for the Concept of Supererogation
The concept of Supererogation is correlated with duty, since its special value is such as long as it goes beyond
our regular obligations (regular duty). This paper tries to underline how if we broaden our sense of duty the
possibility to perform supererogatory acts correspondingly decreases. Special obligations show how hardly acts
of supererogation can be performed if we stand in some morally-relevant special position with the recipient of
our acts. Thus, we can conclude that the relationship between the agent and the recipient of the act (proximity)
plays an important role both for our sense of duty (generating special obligations) and for the possibility of
supererogation. Furthermore, this analysis shows that whenever an act is supererogatory, it cannot be at the
same time a special obligation, and vice versa. As a consequence, if proximity plays such a role, an objection to
the possibility of self-regarding supererogation can be made.
Christopher Hamilton, King’s College London
Religion, forgiveness and humanity
There are many ways of doing philosophy of religion. No doubt all of them have need of abstract concepts and
passages where reflection is more technical than it usually is, say in everyday thought and reflection. But it is
well known that, in this area of philosophy, and not only in this area of philosophy, abstract reflection can run
the risk of losing contact with the ins and outs, the finer-grained details, of the lived experience of reality. One
way to seek to reduce this risk is to approach abstract or general reflection through philosophical reflection on
specific cases. This is what I intend to do in this paper. My aim is to explore in detail a specific and, in my view,
extraordinarily striking example, in this case, an example of forgiveness in a religious, indeed, Christian
context, drawing out where possible general or abstract conclusions, but seeking always to root reflection in the
specific case in order to understand better from a philosophical point of view what is at stake, what is important,
when thinking about the issue in question. Of course, I shall be seeking primarily to elucidate philosophically
the example I shall discuss, but, by implication, I hope that the kinds of questions, worries and concerns I
discuss might raise consciousness – philosophical consciousness – of the kinds of questions that we might
explore in other examples, specifically those which involve forgiveness in a religious context.
David Heyd, Hebrew University in Jerusalem
Can virtue ethics account for supererogation?
Supererogation is essentially a deontological concept. Hence, accounting for it in terms of virtue ethics faces
more difficulties than those encountered by Kantian ethics (as well as utilitarianism). The paper discusses why
recent attempts of virtue ethics to accommodate supererogatory action do not succeed, and why those who
consider that failure an indication of the impossibility of supererogation offer an overly narrow picture of
morality. The power of an ethical map that includes supererogation will be shown to better represent modern
liberal views of individuals having rights, personal autonomy and commitment to their life plans. Despite its
apparent parochialism as arising from the particular world view of Roman Catholic theology, the current
understanding of supererogation as part of secular moral theory reflects it centrality in both our moral
experience and in an adequate theoretical account of it.
Brian McElwee, University of St. Andrews
Demandingness Objections in Ethics
It is common for moral philosophers to reject a moral theory on the basis that its verdicts are unreasonably
demanding- it requires too much of us to be a correct account of our moral obligations. The paradigm instances
of demandingness objections accuse a theory of treating as morally obligatory actions which are in fact
supererogatory- though they may be morally good to do, they are not in fact morally required. In this paper, I
aim to do the following: (i) Vindicate the idea that there can indeed be convincing demandingness objections to
certain moral theories, notwithstanding puzzles about their structure; (ii) Set out the features in virtue of which a
theory is vulnerable to demandingness objections; (iii) Argue that consequentialist moral theories are not
peculiarly vulnerable to demandingness objections.
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Alice Pinheiro Walla, Trinity College Dublin
Kant’s Moral Theory and Demandingness
In this paper, I sketch a Kantian account of duties of rescue, which I take to be compatible with Kant’s theory. I
argue that there is in fact no “trumping relation” between imperfect and perfect duties but merely that “latitude
shrinks away” in certain circumstances. Against possible demandingness objections, I explain why Kant thought
that imperfect duty must allow latitude for choice and argue that we must understand the necessary space for
pursuing one’s own happiness as entailed by Kant’s justification of one’s duty to promote other’s happiness.
Nevertheless, becoming worthy of happiness still has priority over one’s own happiness when circumstances are
such that we cannot secure our own happiness without seriously neglecting more pressing needs of other
persons. I conclude that Kant’s moral theory calls for complementation by the political and juridical domain.
Implementing just political institutions and creating satisfactorily well-ordered societies create an external world
which is friendlier to our attempts to reconcile moral integrity and a happy human life.
Rowland Stout, University College Dublin.
Generosity and presumptuousness
Generosity is not the same thing as kindness or self-sacrifice. Presumptuousness is incompatible with
generosity, but not with kindness or self-sacrifice. I consider a kind but interfering neighbour who
inappropriately takes over the role of mother to my daughter; her behaviour is not generous. Presumptuousness
is the improper exercise of a disposition to adopt a role that one does not have. With this in mind I explore the
idea that generosity is the proper exercise of the disposition to adopt a role that one does not have. It is a mean
between meanness on the one hand (where that disposition is not exercised when it should be) and
presumptuousness on the other hand (where that disposition is exercised when it should not be). Adopting a
role is being motivated by the considerations that should motivate someone who actually has that role. The
disposition to adopt roles you do not have is important in social situations where there is a need for a role that
nobody is filling. It is also the basis of developing relationships like friendship; you have to act as if you are a
friend before you become a friend. This model fits the parable of the Good Samaritan in an obvious way. It
also explains charity and forgiveness. I suggest that forgiveness is demanded by a certain relationship – call it
love. What makes forgiveness optional after someone has wronged you is that love itself may be optional after
someone has wronged you. There is nothing generous about forgiving someone you love, though loving them
may be generous. Forgiveness only counts as generous when you don’t love the person, and even then it can
fail to be generous if it is presumptuous.
Ulla Wessels, University of Saarland
Beyond the Call of Duty: The Structure of a Moral Region
Most theories of supererogation fit into what might be called the threshold model. According to the threshold
model, in every situation there is a threshold for the good to be done such that (a) it is obligatory to perform an
action that meets the threshold, and (b) every action that exceeds the threshold is supererogatory. In my paper I
will first try to show that the threshold model for theories of supererogation is not only incomplete in content,
but also inadequate in form. Then I will suggest an alternative to the threshold model: the Format. The Format
takes into account that there are actions that do not deserve to be called supererogatory, even though they are
morally better than others which do.
Mark Wynn, University of Leeds
Supererogation and the spiritual life: some perspectives drawn from Thomas Aquinas and John of the Cross
In this paper, I aim to do three things. First, I note a contrast between the virtues of neighbour love and infused
temperance, as they are represented in the work of Thomas Aquinas: in the first case, but not the second, I
suggest, the introduction of a theological context changes the status of an action, so that it is now obligatory
when it would otherwise have been supererogatory. I consider how we might explain this difference, and what it
might suggest about the nature of the demands of a “religious ethic”. Next, I note how John of the Cross’s
account of the spiritual life, while similar to Aquinas’s on certain points, invites a more radical revision of the
distinction between the obligatory and the supererogatory. Finally, and briefly, I argue that these reflections
throw new light on a puzzle which is posed by some attempts to ground religious commitments in moral
commitments.
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