But it seems that the issue of the deontic status of charity is often of a normative rather than conceptual kind. It focuses on the demarcation line between the obligatory and the gratuitous, both on the personal level of the behavior of the individual and on the social and political level e.
The problem of demarcation also plagues the paradigm case of supererogatory behavior, the so-called saintly and heroic acts. Fire fighters rushing to a burning house to save its residents risk their lives in a way that moves every spectator. But are they not paid for it?
The supererogationist might respond by turning our attention to a similar risk taken by a by-stander who joins the professional emergency forces and literally jumps into the fire. Deniers of supererogation might argue that although such an action is heroic, it ought not to have been performed, since the slight chances of saving the victims of the fire do not justify the very high risk of loss of life of the volunteer.
Kant at one point expresses his doubts about the moral motive behind some of the extreme cases of moral heroism and warns against moral fanaticism and sentimentalism Kant There are however examples of morally good actions which can be denied a supererogatory status only with much difficulty.
Volunteering is a typical act that cannot be reduced to a duty, even not in a hypothetical manner as qualified supererogationism might try to do. When a job or a task must be done by a group of people, the group might select the individual who will do the job on the basis of some principle of justice or desert or, in the absence of such principle, by lot. In extreme cases, such as taking part in a highly risky medical experiment, it may be the case that no selection process, including lottery, should be deployed.
If an individual volunteers to take upon herself the task rather than leaving it to the selected person, and particularly when it is wrong to select anyone , then clearly her act is supererogatory. Promising is similar to volunteering in its optional nature which is not associated with the demarcation problem. This might solve a paradox which has been raised: is a promise to do a supererogatory act possible? It seems not, since the promise fulfilling act cannot be both an obligatory act of promise keeping and a supererogatory act at the same time Kawall, This may lead us to the conclusion that it is impossible to promise to do a supererogatory act since no act can secure the bare minimum of the the obligation created by the promise maker: only a supererogatory act would be considered as promise fulfilling and such an act is by definition not obligatory Benn However, if the act of promising itself is supererogatory, then so is its fulfillment, even though the expectation created by the promise means that after being made it must be fulfilled.
The paradox may prove to be illusory once we distinguish between the general supererogatory nature of the content of the act e. Of course, anti-supererogationists could argue that volunteering and promising are both imperfect duties, i. People who never volunteer are morally condemnable; people who never commit themselves by promising are morally defective and fall short of standards of friendship and social behavior.
There are cases in which the supererogatory response is expressed in omission rather than in action. Forgiveness is a prime example of supererogatory forbearance. The offended party refrains from reacting negatively to the wrong done to him. Rather than the morally justified hostility and resentment that he was entitled to express, he shows forgiveness. There is, however a heated debate in ethical theory about the deontic nature of forgiveness.
Many philosophers and non-philosophers alike believe that forgiveness is a moral duty , particularly if certain conditions like expressions of regret by the offender have been satisfied e.
Rashdall An unforgiving person is, accordingly, morally blameworthy. But for others, forgiveness is the epitome of supererogatory action since it is completely gratuitous, dependent on the good will of the offended party Heyd For supererogationists the touching aspect of forgiveness lies exactly in its optional nature.
Since the offender deserves punishment or at least resentment , he cannot at the same time deserve or have the right to forgiveness. Despite the close similarity between giving and forgiving, it seems that the latter is a purer example of supererogatory act since it has a better chance of breaking what Derrida refers to as an endless circle: while a gift imposes a duty debt which can be satisfied only by a slightly larger counter-gift which would initiate yet another round of giving , forgiveness is more a matter of attitude and has no measure.
Note, though, that if toleration is taken as as supererogatory, it cannot, for the reasons discussed above, be ascribed to governments but only to individuals and groups of individuals. However, even if certain acts of forgiveness and toleration exemplify a supererogatory response, there surely are cases in which both are forbidden the unforgivable and the intolerable and there may be cases in which they are both obligatory persistent pleas of the offender to be forgiven or the political demands of toleration of minorities in a multi-cultural society.
Does he have a duty to forgive? Or is divine forgiveness a pure act of gratuitous grace? If God can act supererogatorily, how does that reflect on the perfection of divine justice that it transcends?
The application of the concepts of forgiveness on the political level raise further questions. Even if the universal and unbiased rules of justice can be surpassed by individuals who show forgiveness or toleration, can institutions like the state or the courts exercise such supererogatory restraint without violating the demands of impartiality and equality before the law Heyd ?
Legal pardon granted by kings and presidents reflects this tension between the wish to leave some measure of individual discretion in showing mercy to some public figures and the concern for the impartial application of such supererogatory grace.
There are of course many other examples of supererogatory action although the length and nature of the list is dependent on the definition of supererogation we adopt and the view of its value. But to the extent that actions and forbearances are supererogatory we may summarize their source of value as belonging either to their good consequences as in the case of giving and charity or to the strength of character or virtue of the agent as in the risky acts of heroism or to the pure good will involved in choosing to do what lies beyond duty volunteering, forgiveness, small favors.
Beyond the complex philosophical debate about the nature and scope of supererogation, the discussion of paradigm examples indicate that any ethical system which does not allow for any actions beyond the call of duty would prove to be distressingly impoverished, even if coherent.
As early as Derek Parfit raised the following question: imagine that you can save the right arm of another person at a great cost to yourself; but if you decide to do so, you can save also his left arm at no extra cost to you; are you under a duty to save both arms? Yet this answer does not easily fit theories of supererogation according to which if saving one arm is supererogatory, saving two arms must a fortiori be supererogatory. This question gave rise to more recent debates about "Effective Altruism".
If two children are stranded in a burning house and you risk your life by entering the house and save one child, you ought to save also the other child if that does not incur further risk to you. The two children have no claim on you as long as you stand outside just doing what your duty demands calling the fire fighters ; but once you are inside, the second child has a claim on you to be saved too.
The same justification not to save a child from a burning house the extreme risk must apply to both children. But once you are inside the house and have already risked your life, this justification does not work if you choose not to save the other Horton Against this demand for optimization limited only by agent-relative qualifications there is the unqualified, non-consequentialist argument that one needs no excuse or exemption from avoiding entering the burning house and that optimization is not a duty.
Thus neither the two children together, nor the second child separately, have a claim against the bystander for not acting in the optimal way Sinclair Although for the non-consequentialist there is no duty of optimization of the good, he or she admits that once one gave up the justification for not entering the burning house, one cannot use the risk in order to avoid saving the second child because the risk has already been undertaken in saving the first child Sinclair This demonstrates that the threshold conception of the supererogatory as everything lying beyond the obligatory requires some refinement.
There are circumstances in which in the realm of the supererogatory some new obligations may be created Wessels As we have seen, such circumstances exist in the case of promises: promising itself is supererogatory; but once a promise is made, actions fulfilling the promise become obligatory.
In recent years there have been attempts to extend the scope of the category of the supererogatory to non-moral normative domains. All that is needed for such an extension of the applicability of the supererogatory is a normative domain which has a scale of value on the one hand e. Similarly one may also speak of supererogation in the context of prudence , when one does more than can be expected of a normal level of care and self-control in sticking to a medically desirable diet McElwee Even in business ethics the category of supererogation is used to describe behavior of firms which not only go beyond legal and economic norms but also beyond corporate social responsibility and "positive deviance" such as philanthropic activities.
This was an unprecedented decision which meant a huge financial sacrifice on part of the firm. Finally, supererogation is also applied in the sphere of professional ethics , such as the behavior of doctors. As against Rawls and Heyd, it is argued that supererogatory behavior is not confined to the domain of natural duties but may hold also in cases of surpassing professional duties. For example, a nurse who brings books from home to a patient in her ward is acting beyond her professional duty but she is still acting as a nurse and in that sense her act is "continuous" with her professional duties.
The good promoted beyond the normal professional standard is "profession specific" Eriksen These complications and possible extensions of the category of the supererogatory challenge the "standard model" of supererogation by questioning the assumptions about the specifically moral nature of supererogation and the clear demarcation between the obligatory and the supererogatory. What is Supererogation: Problems of Definition 3.
Three Views of Supererogation: Problems of Justification 3. The Two Faces of Morality: Values and Duties Moral discourse is normative in nature, that is, concerned with guiding behavior rather than describing the world. What is Supererogation: Problems of Definition The conceptual question of what we mean by supererogation and the substantive question of whether there actually are supererogatory acts and how their normative value can be justified are inextricably interrelated.
A more general schema of this classification runs thus Chisholm : actions that are good to do and bad not to do actions that are neither good to do nor bad not to do actions that are bad to do and good not to do Urmson argued that a morally significant class of actions, to which he referred as saintly and heroic such as throwing oneself on an exploding hand grenade in order to save the lives of others , does not fall under any of these categories.
He referred to this class as praiseworthy though non-obligatory acts, or in terms of the above general schema as actions that are good to do but not bad not to do The scope of this further category became, however, the focus of debate. Or in other words, are there actions that are bad to do but not good not to do Some philosophers Chisholm , Richards , Forrester , and Driver were attracted to the logically neat symmetry of supererogation and suberogation, but a critical examination of this artificially invented category demonstrates both the difficulty in filling it with content and flaws in the general schema itself Heyd , Mellema Three Views of Supererogation: Problems of Justification The modern debate whether there actually are supererogatory acts has lost its traditional fervor typical of the great religious disputes between Catholics and Reformers in the 16 th and 17 th centuries.
The views about the possibility and value of supererogatory acts can be grouped under three categories: Anti-supererogationism: since all morally good action is obligatory, there cannot be a separate class of morally good action the omission of which is not wrong.
Qualified supererogationism: there are actions which lie beyond the call of duty, but their value is derived from their being hypothetical duties, subjective duties, duties from which one may be excused, that is, duties in a weaker sense. Unqualified supererogationism: supererogatory actions lie entirely and without qualification beyond the requirements of morality and that is the source of their unique value.
Paradigm Examples The analysis of concrete cases or examples is methodologically important in the philosophical discussion of supererogation. Complications and Extensions As early as Derek Parfit raised the following question: imagine that you can save the right arm of another person at a great cost to yourself; but if you decide to do so, you can save also his left arm at no extra cost to you; are you under a duty to save both arms?
Bibliography Monographs and Collections Cowley, C. Flescher, A. Heyd, D. Mellema, G. Schumaker, M. Ethics and Politics , , vol. See I, II, Q. Archer, A. Attfield, R. Baron, M. Hill, Jr. Timmons and R. Johnson eds. Benn, C. Benbaji, H. Bergson, H.
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Document related concepts. Moral exclusion wikipedia , lookup Special measures for gender equality in the United Nations wikipedia , lookup. All public servants have the following characteristics except: paid from public purse special duties power to use force held to higher standard ANS: C REF: p. Which of the following is not one of the ethical principles that govern public servants identified by the Josephson Institute? Denmark b. Singapore c. United States d. The highly technical discipline investigating the meaning of ethical terms including a critical study of how ethical statements can be referred to as: a.
Applied b. Normative c. Professional d. The application of ethical principles to specific issues such as social research or medical practice is called: a. A good Samaritan who jumps into a river to save a drowning child, risking his or her own life to do so, has performed a n : a.
Superogatories have to do with: a. Which of the following is not an example of an imperfect duty?
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