An Excess of Excellence: Aristotelian Supererogation and the Degrees of Virtue (original) (raw)
Related papers
Can Virtue Ethics Account for Supererogation?
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 2015
In his classical article, ‘Saints and Heroes’, James Urmson single-handedly revived the idea of supererogation from it astonishingly long post-Reformation slumber. During the first two decades after its publication, Urmson's challenge was taken up almost exclusively by either utilitarians or deontologists of some sort. On the face of it, neither classical utilitarianism nor Kant's categorical imperative makes room for action which is better than the maximizing requirement, on the one hand, or beyond the requirement of duty, on the other. Nevertheless, both utilitarians and Kantians, as well as deontic logicians, offered more flexible and sophisticated versions of their respective theories which could accommodate supererogatory action. In my 1982 book on supererogation I tried to address the question whether virtue ethics could capture that new category of actions which are praiseworthy though not strictly required. But the focus of my discussion was mostly Aristotle (and Sen...
A Dilemma for Neo-Aristotelian Supererogation [Penultimate Draft]
Ethics, 2017
It has recently been argued that virtue ethics cannot accommodate the possibility of supererogation. In response, Rebecca Stangl (2016) proposes a neo-Aristotelian account of supererogation that, she argues, generates plausible verdicts, while also being compatible with the doctrine of the mean. I argue that Stangl's response is unsuccessful. First, I demonstrate that the proposal in its current form is problematically indeterminate, meaning that we cannot know what verdicts would be produced in response to classic examples. Second, I argue that anyone attempting to develop the account faces a dilemma, and that both options for responding to this dilemma generate problematic results.
Supererogation, wrongdoing, and vice: on the autonomy of the ethics of virtue
The Journal of philosophy, 1986
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
SOCIAL SCIENCES, 2024
This article examines the specifics of virtue ethics as an an- thropological turn in the moral philosophy of the 20th century based on Aristotle’s ethical ideas. The purpose of this article is to show that the way these ideas were borrowed determined the direction of the thematic devel- opment of virtue ethics in conceptualizing the moral assessment of human activity and at the same time, created the main conceptual difficulty – i.e., the problematization of human nature, a challenge that has yet to be met. To that end, this article provides an analytical review of the main works of the more significant representatives of virtue ethics and systematizes their references to Aristotelian philosophy. It is explained that Aristotle’s philos- ophy is invoked above all in developing the approach to determining the moral content of an act in a specific situation, where the application of a universal rule has to be complemented by a host of situational conditions, as well as in an attempt to bring back motive and personality qualities to the description of such conditions. The latter also involves the conceptualiza- tion of personal qualities as the moral state of a person, correlated with that person’s development (possibly by nature and in reality through interaction with other people). The author concludes that virtue ethics borrowed some of Aristotle’s ideas, but did not provide a deep analysis of his philosophy. As a result, the problem of conceptualizing human nature was not solved, whereas it could have substantiated the possibility of moral assessments of an act that are not reduced to calculating its consequences and do not require an appeal to a transcendent legislator or the abstraction of duty. The achievements of virtue ethics show that (1) one cannot selectively return to moral philosophy isolated concepts from the past, and a comprehensive de- scription of the phenomenon of morality in human activity is necessary; and (2) the return of old concepts also brings back the unresolved problems of old moral theories (in the case of virtue, it is the problem of making choices and forming a moral disposition).
Mind, 2021
One of the nice things about the state of contemporary normative ethics is that virtue ethicists no longer need to elbow their way into the debate with consequentialists and deontologists. Virtue ethics has been recognized as a distinct normative theory, and we can now start to think about how various frameworks might borrow from each other and grow. Neither Heroes Nor Saints is an important part of this research project. Virtue ethicists have historically tried to distinguish themselves from their older ethical siblings by rejecting or downplaying the central deontic notions of the obligatory, permissible, and impermissible. Those influenced by Anscombe, for example, have seen these evaluative categories as reflecting a law-like conception of ethics, which prompts us to seek the wrong kind of normative classification (1958, pp. 5-6); more recently, Annas has shown in her analysis of right action that while virtue ethicists can give an account of duty and related terms, traditionally deontological concepts should be explained after virtue terms have already done the landscaping (2014, pp. 16-18). So virtue theorists need not be averse to deontological vocabulary, and for those who feel the pull of virtue ethics but think that an adequate ethical theory should be able to give an account of supererogatory and suberogatory actions, Stangl's book is the thing to read. It is impeccably clear, well structured, and easily readable, and provides both deontologists interested in virtue and virtue ethicists interested in the deontological conceptual schema with the kind of account they need to bridge these approaches. I will focus on three main issues, which question whether Stangl's approach is sufficiently motivated given alternative Aristotelian ways of dealing with the relevant problems, and consider whether we lose some important Aristotelian insights in the synthesis. The first issue concerns Stangl's analyses of some central cases of supererogation and suberogation, which arguably rely on a limited number of virtue and vice terms and are insufficiently described to give a virtue ethical evaluation. The second issue concerns the relationship between moral psychology and moral theory in Stangl's account, as Stangl gives some reason for thinking that supererogation and
Saints, Heroes and Moral Necessity
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplementary Volume, 2015
Many people who perform paradigmatic examples of acts of supererogation claim that they could not have done otherwise. In this paper I will argue that these self-reports from moral exemplars present a challenge to the traditional view of supererogation as involving agential sacrifice. I will argue that the claims made by moral exemplars are plausibly understood as what Bernard Williams calls a ‘practical necessity’. I will then argue that this makes it implausible to view these acts as involving agential sacrifice.