The nature and value of supererogatory actions

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 209-222

  Stanlick, Nancy A ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84887907219     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/0047-2786.t01-1-00013     Document Type: Article

References (12)

1. J. O. Urmson, "Saints and Heroes," Introduction to Ethical Theory, ed. Kenneth F. Roger-son (Ft. Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1991), 181-90.
2. Susan Wolf, "Moral Saints," Journal of Philosophy 79, no. 8 (Aug. 1982), 419-39.
3. Elizabeth M. Pybus, "Saints and Heroes," Philosophy, 57 (1982), 193-99.
4. Jean Hampton, "Selflessness and the Loss of Self," Social Philosophy and Policy, 10, no. 1 (1993), 135-65.
5. Pybus, "Saints and Heroes," 193.
6. Barbara Herman discusses conditions essentially similar when she speaks of honoring people who have "struggled morally." We encourage other people who find themselves in the same or similar conditions, but we do not encourage anyone to bring about conditions in which they must experience moral struggles. Her point, simply put, is that "it need not be a fault if one never earns a battle citation for doing one's dutiful actions." Barbara Herman, "On the Value of Acting from the Motive of Duty," The Philosophical Review, 90, no. 3 (July 1981), 360 (emphasis in original).
7. Patricia M. McGoldrick, "Saints and Heroes: A Plea for the Supererogatory," Philosophy, 59 (Oct. 1984), 525.
8. Elizabeth M. Pybus, "A Plea for the Supererogatory: A Reply" Philosophy, 61 (1986), 529.
9. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982).
10. Hale supports a position roughly parallel to that of Hampton in her claim that we are morally required in many cases to perform other-regarding actions, but this does not mean that "each of us is morally required to do that rather than do something else." The conflict or decision regarding what to do can be between other-regarding and self-regarding obligation. Such a conflict is not the only kind that may exist, of course, because there are other cases in which two other-regarding actions may conflict. Hale's point is that an action considered "supererogatory" is one we consider "more onerous for ourselves." See Susan C. Hale, "Against Supererogation," American Philosophical Quarterly, 28, no. 4 (Oct. 1991), 273-83.
11. This is much like the Aristotelian requirements that an agent know what he is doing, choose to do it, and do it from a firm and unchanging character. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. II, 1105b1.
12. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. IV, 1110a1-1110a15.