Abstract
Julia Driver has argued that there is a special set of actions, lodged between neutral actions and wrongful actions called suberogatory actions. These actions are not impermissible, according to Driver, but still strike us as troubling or bad, and are therefore worse than morally neutral (1992). Since this paper was written 20 years ago, many philosophers have utilized or alluded to this moral territory. The existence of some action-types that are not wrong but still carry some dis-value has become a staple in the realm of moral evaluation. However, Driver's argument for the existence of this moral territory amounts to three types of moral cases that, according to Driver, can only be explained by the existence of the suberogatory. In this short paper, I will respond by saying that we can account for these cases using our traditional notions of moral neutrality and moral wrongness. The temptation of invoking the suberogatory is that it can be used as a substitute for answering a variety of hard ethical questions. However appealing this substitute may be, we should resist it so long as the problem cases put forward to motivate the new evaluative realm can be handled, and handled well, by our traditional apparatus.
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Notes
Driver’s view is an expanded and altered account of a moral realm first described by Richard Chisholm, who called bad acts that are not forbidden “offensive” (1963). Though dealing with Chisholm’s conceptual scheme for ethics is not within the scope of this paper, I should say here that I believe that the examples he describes as requiring the evaluative term “offense” fall into Driver’s case-types 1 and 3, and can be accommodated at the level of applied ethics in the same method that I use in this work.
Driver, 286–287. Do not confuse “morally charged situations” with “moral dilemmas.” The latter occurs when the only options available to a moral agent are all morally wrong.
Driver, 289
Driver, 287
Driver, 291
Driver, 292
Driver, 292.
Waldron, 21–39.
Thomson famously argues that this is possible in her 1971 “A Defense of Abortion.” She describes a scenario in which an elder brother receives a big box of delicious chocolates as a present while the younger brother receives none. She suggests that it is probably morally impermissible for the older brother to refuse to share the chocolates. Yet, we cannot say that the younger brother has any right to the chocolates that the eldest violates by refusing to share (56–57).
Will theorists believe that the function of rights (whether legal or moral) is to protect the autonomy and choices of the right holder. Interest Based Rights theorists contend that rights (again, whether legal or moral) function to protect the interests of the right holder. Will theory does have to not deny that an individual’s interests can be frustrated in an impermissible way, even if the impermissible action does not amount to the violation of a right. Interest based rights theory does not have to deny that an individual’s discretion can be undermined in an impermissible way, even if the impermissible action does not amount to the violation of a right. These traditional theories identify some normative claims and privileges that we actually have as rights and others as non-rights. For a discussion of these traditional theories and the collections of normative advantages that each theory identifies as a moral right, see Leif Wenar’s 2005 work on “the Nature of Rights.”
Even if Driver can success full describe such a theory, the rest of my paper can be read as arguing that the cases she describes as suberogatory are either permissible acts or rights violations.
Recall that the same question arose in the kidney donation case.
David Boonin (then Boonin-Vail) examines this question. He suggests that a doctor who saved a patient’s life at Time-1 would not have to then go through great physical sacrifice at T-2 in order to keep the patient alive. This is true, according to Boonin, even though the doctor is responsible for the existence of the patient’s life at T-2 (1997).
Judith Jarvis Thomson examines this question in her article “A Defense of Abortion.” She suggests that the degree of reasonable precaution a woman takes against getting pregnant is positively correlated with the degree to which it is morally permissible for her to have an abortion (1971).
Note that when Thomson calls carrying a child to term supererogatory she is working under the assumption that the fetus does have moral status.
References
Boonin-Vail. (1997). A defense of a defense of abortion. Ethics, 107, 286–313.
Driver, Julia. (1992) “The suberogatory.” Austalasian Journal of Philosophy. Vol. 70, No. 3.
Singer, P. (1972). Famine, affluence, and morality. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1(1), 229–243.
Thomson, J. J. (1971). A defense of abortion. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1(1), 47–66.
Waldron, J. (1981). A right to do wrong. Ethics, 92(1), 21–39.
Wenar, L. (2005). The nature of rights. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 33(3), 223–252.
Wetheimer, A. (1996). Exploitation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Thomas E. Hill Jr. and David Pruitt for helpful conversations that improved this work.
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Liberto, H.R. Denying the Suberogatory. Philosophia 40, 395–402 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-011-9343-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-011-9343-4