Abstract
How can we make sense of God’s moral goodness if God cannot be subject to moral obligations? This question is troubling for divine command theorists, as if we cannot make sense of God’s moral goodness then it seems hard to see how God’s commands could be morally good. Alston (Divine nature and human language, 1989) argues that the concept of supererogation solves this problem. If we accept the existence of acts that are morally good but not morally required then we should accept that there is no need for an act to fulfill a moral obligation in order for it to be morally good (1989, p. 261). This view has been criticized by both Stump (Philosophical Perspectives 6:475–491, 1992) and Lombardi (American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 79(2):313–326, 2005), who claim that it is impossible for an agent who has no obligations to perform acts of supererogation. Young (International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 73:83–95, 2013) attempts to defend Alston’s solution by offering a new analysis of supererogation. In this paper I will argue first that Young fails to provide an adequate response to Lombardi’s objection. I will then provide my own defence of Alston’s proposal.
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Notes
Plato (1889).
For the sake of clarity in this paper I will follow Alston, Lombardi and Young in using the masculine personal pronoun to refer to God. I do not, however, mean to suggest that using this pronoun in reference to God is more fitting or appropriate than the feminine equivalent.
An interesting question that is raised by Kraay’s work on the possibility of divine satisficing is whether or not this issue is separable from the issue of the supposed incompatibility between divine freedom and divine moral perfection. The problem of divine freedom is roughly, if God is morally perfect then it is logically impossible for him not to create the best possible world. However, if it is impossible God not to create the best possible then it looks like God did not create the world freely, as he was unable to do otherwise (for detailed overview of this problem see Rowe and Howard-Snyder 2008). While a full investigation of the question of how closely connected the issue of divine satisficing is to the issue of divine freedom is beyond the scope of this paper it is worth pointing out one way in which these two issues could come apart. Suppose God was faced with a choice between creating two equally good worlds and a range of inferior worlds. In this case God would have some limited freedom to choose which world to create. However, if we accept that God is essentially unsurpassable then it would still be impossible for him to satisfice by creating one of the lesser worlds. Of course, this point does nothing to solve the problem of divine freedom but it does show that it is that the issue of divine satisficing is not fully reducible to the issue of divine freedom. Another way in which these two problems are separable is that it might be possible to reconcile divine freedom with an inability to do less than best by arguing that divine freedom, unlike human freedom, does not require the ability to act in a morally suboptimal way (See Mawson 2005 for a defence of this position). On this account divine freedom can exist even if divine satisficing is impossible. However, it is possible that a solution to the problem of divine freedom may have implications for the question of whether or not divine satisficing is possible. Thanks to an anonymous referee for asking me to consider this issue.
McNamara offers the most explicit formulation of this idea claiming that we should understand an act being beyond the call of duty in terms of a ranking of worlds. An act is beyond the call of duty if it is higher ranked than other possible worlds available to the agent where she acts permissibly from then on (2011, pp. 212–213). Essential to this understanding of supererogation is that the other worlds are accessible. Worlds that are not accessible to the agent are not relevant to the question of whether or not an act is supererogatory.
In Archer (2013) I use this case to support a different claim, that acts of supererogation do not need to be performed by agents with altruistic intentions. I also argue against including a motivation condition in the definition of supererogation here but in this paper I will restrict my criticism of Young to the claim that being motivated by love is not necessary for supererogation.
Young accepts that this is how moral philosophers use the term. For an account of the theological origins of the term see Heyd (1982), Ch. 1.
We might wonder whether this is really what Alston meant by his proposal. While my aim here is not Alston exegesis there is at least some reason to think that this is what he intended. Interestingly, Stump comments in a footnote (1992, p. 487 fn.5) that in response to her paper Alston maintained that the supererogatory is sufficient but not necessary to make the divide between moral obligation and moral goodness. This suggests to me that Alston does intend this interpretation. It is important not to overstate the interpretative point. I am not claiming that this is the only acceptable way to interpret Alston’s proposal. Rather, I am claiming that this is one acceptable way of interpreting it.
(2010, p. 175).
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Archer, A. Divine moral goodness, supererogation and The Euthyphro Dilemma. Int J Philos Relig 79, 147–160 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-015-9510-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-015-9510-9