Abstract
Supererogatory actions must go beyond duty not only by being optional, but also by being good to do. Understanding the evaluative condition that supererogatory actions must meet is vital in order to understand the very concept of supererogation. I argue for two key features of the goodness of supererogatory actions: firstly, that they are comparative, and secondly, that they are relative. Specifically, I argue that an action meets the evaluative condition of supererogation if and only if it is (i) better than some permissible alternative and (ii) better than (or at least as good as) all permissible alternatives that are (a) as costly or (b) less costly; where the sense in which it is better is relative to a particular beneficiary. Seeing why this is so reveals the complexity of our notion of the supererogatory and captures our intuitions on core and complex cases. Furthermore, it makes room for supererogation’s mirror: the suberogatory.
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Notes
- 1.
I use the term ‘optionality’, following Paul McNamara’s terminology (“Making Room for Going Beyond the Call”).
- 2.
I assume for simplicity that these two conditions are sufficient as well as necessary. Note, however, that there have been discussions about whether or not supererogatory acts must also be praiseworthy (Archer, “Are Acts of Supererogation Always Praiseworthy?”; McNamara, “Supererogation, inside and out: Toward an Adequate Scheme for Common-Sense Morality”; Mellema, “Supererogation and the Fulfillment of Duty”; Cowley, “The Agents, Acts and Attitudes of Supererogation.”) and/or intentional (Heyd, Supererogation; Benn, “Intentions, Motives and Supererogation”; Archer, “Supererogation and Intentions of the Agent”; Jackson, “The Nature of Supererogation”).
- 3.
I set aside the claim that, in some specific situations, it can be supererogatory to keep a promise (Harman, “Morally Permissible Moral Mistakes”).
- 4.
Feinberg, “Supererogation and Rules,” 281.
- 5.
Benn, “Supererogation, Optionality and Cost”; Stocker, “Acts, Perfect Duties, and Imperfect Duties”; Mellema, “Supererogation and the Fulfillment of Duty”; Horgan and Timmons, “Untying a Knot from the Inside Out”; Chisholm, “The Ethics of Requirement”.
- 6.
This altruistic condition is endorsed by numerous theorists. For just two, see New, “Saints, Heroes and Utilitarians”; Heyd, Supererogation.
- 7.
Those who focus on doing what is best (such as McGinn, “Must I Be Morally Perfect?”) normally believe doing so is required and thus reject the notion of supererogation completely.
- 8.
Scheffler, Human Morality; Murphy, Moral Demands in Nonideal Theory; Kagan, The Limits of Morality. This objection, as I have argued elsewhere, is in fact better understood as the claim that theories without the supererogatory are overly confining (Benn, “Over-Demandingness Objections and Supererogation”).
- 9.
Raz, “Permissions and Supererogation”; Heyd, Supererogation; Clark, “The Meritorious and the Mandatory”.
- 10.
Benn, “The Enemy of the Good: Supererogation and Requiring Perfection”.
- 11.
Benn, “Supererogatory Spandrels”.
- 12.
Urmson, “Saints and Heroes”.
- 13.
One reason for this is the belief that it is unnecessary to introduce the notion of cost in order to determine whether an action is good. Some like Horgan and Timmons have rejected that costs play any role in determining whether or not an act is supererogatory (Horgan and Timmons, “Untying a Knot from the Inside Out.”). However, elsewhere, I have demonstrated the importance of cost for determining the optionality of supererogatory (that is, which permissible actions are optional) (Benn, “Supererogation, Optionality and Cost.”). None have explored whether cost is important for determining the way in which a supererogatory act is morally good. Note that while some might reject the relevance of cost in its entirety in determining normative matters, most proponents of supererogation accept at the very least that considerations of cost to the agent can determine the extent and limit of our duty (Stanlick, “The Nature and Value of Supererogatory Actions”; Straumanis, “Duties to Oneself: An Ethical Basis for Self-Liberation?”; McGoldrick, “Saints and Heroes: A Plea for the Supererogatory”; Jackson, “The Nature of Supererogation”; Rawls, A Theory of Justice; Jacobs, “Obligation, Supererogation and Self-Sacrifice”; Portmore, “Position-Relative Consequentialism, Agent-Centered Options, and Supererogation.”). Others, like Barry Curtis, have argued that the disparity between costs and benefits also determines the limits of supererogation, as actions that are extremely costly and provide relatively insignificant benefits are, he claims, ‘foolish’ rather than supererogatory (Curtis, “The Supererogatory, the Foolish and the Morally Required.”). These include risking your life to keep a trivial promise, getting into debt for an extravagant present and quitting your job over a minor social injustice.
- 14.
This is one interpretation of McNamara’s view that supererogation is an actions whose “performance is superior to any performance you might have put in while doing the minimum” (McNamara, “Making Room for Going Beyond the Call,” 429).
- 15.
The cost in terms of time and effort are judged to be small, medium and large comparative to the alternatives. I do not suppose that, generally speaking, looking through a hotel room for a lost $10 note involves a large amount of effort. Also, for the sake of this example, let us assume that all four options are permissible, leaving aside any legal or moral prohibitions on the destruction of currency.
- 16.
This is not to say that (1) in this example is supererogatory. A supererogatory action has to be, not only good, but also optional. On my account of optionality for example then the least-costly act constitutes the ‘bare minimum’ and, as such, would not be optional (Benn, “Supererogation, Optionality and Cost,” 2404.). Option (1) in this example, therefore constitutes the bare minimum and while meeting the evaluative condition on both views under discussion would not be optional and therefore not supererogatory.
- 17.
Parfit has argued that, if you decide to enter a burning building to save the life of one child and could for the same cost save two, you are morally required to save two, even if you are not in fact morally required to enter the burning building and save even one child. I do not go so far as to say that you are under a moral duty to give $10 rather than $5 (i.e. that the option of giving $5 is in fact impermissible), instead offering a milder claim that it is simply not supererogatory to offer $5 when you could more easily offer $10. However, Parfit’s example have caused some to suggest (Heyd, private correspondence) that it might be possible for an agent to both do something supererogatory (save one child) and by the very same action something that violates a duty (failing to save the other child). The explanation for this however is based on the centrality of reactive attitudes (it is appropriate for the mother of the first child to consider the agent’s action heroic and worthy of praise and gratitude but at the same time appropriate for the mother of the second child to harshly blame the agent for not saving her child’s life). While I agree with the aptness of these reactions, it therefore emphasizes to me that reactive attitudes are not the appropriate measure by which we should determine deontic categories of permissibility and impermissibility. There are strong theoretic reasons, I believe, to refuse to accept that supererogatory actions can be duty-violating. For more on the deontic condition of supererogation, see my Benn, “Supererogation, Optionality and Cost”.
- 18.
Note that even if it is accepted that the least-costly act is good on some occasions, this does not entail that it is supererogatory. Recall that on my account of the optionality of supererogatory acts, the least-costly permissible act constitutes the bare minimum and is therefore not optional (Benn.). On this view, therefore, the least-costly permissible act is never supererogatory.
- 19.
Horton goes further and claims that not only is it not good and not supererogatory to save one when you could for the same cost save two, but that it would be wrong to do so (Horton, “The All or Nothing Problem.” See also Pummer, “Whether and Where to Give”; McMahan, “Doing Good and Doing the Best.”). I do not suppose here that it is wrong or forbidden. I simply claim that it fails to meet the evaluative condition for supererogation. This is important because, as I will discuss in Sect. 5, the possibility of being entitled to perform worse actions, even at no less cost, opens the way for suberogation.
- 20.
Some might worry that this restricted version of the evaluative condition is a low bar for supererogation. Suppose that (A) saving Ben or (B) saving Ben and Beth were the only permissible options. On my account, it is true that saving Ben alone fails to meet the evaluative condition, but even in this modified example (where it is impermissible to do nothing) saving Ben and Beth still meets the evaluative condition: it is better than a permissible alternative, namely (A), and it is better than all equally-costly permissible alternatives (and there are no less-costly alternatives). This might make the evaluative condition too easy to fulfill. However, I am happy to bite this particular bullet, especially if we note that just because (B) meets the evaluative condition, this does not entail that it meets the deontic condition for supererogation. On my account of optionality, for example, as both (A) and (B) are the least-costly actions, they constitute the ‘bare minimum’ and thus (B) would not count as supererogatory, even if it does meet the evaluative condition (Benn, “Supererogation, Optionality and Cost.”). This raises the bar for supererogation as the action must not only be better (or as good as) all less-costly or as-costly alternatives, it must also be more costly than some permissible alternative. I thank Seth Lazar for prompting me to consider this case, a similar one appearing in his Lazar, “Deontological Decision Theory and Agent-Centered Options.” (Note that Lazar’s discussion of this case asks how uncertainty should be factored into determining permissibility. I leave aside all considerations of uncertainty).
- 21.
One reason is that the beneficiaries are different and you would go to greater lengths to help this person over that person, even if the benefit you bring about would be the same. I discuss the case of different beneficiaries in Sect. 4.
- 22.
In this, I agree with Lazar that “if the moral difference between two acts depends only on my well-being, then it should be up to me (perhaps within limits) which of those acts to choose” (Lazar, “Accommodating Options,” 250).
- 23.
See for example Curtis’s discussion of ‘foolish’ acts: where the cost to the agent far outweighs the benefits and therefore, he argues, should not be considered supererogatory (Curtis, “The Supererogatory, the Foolish and the Morally Required”).
- 24.
This is close to the ‘production cost’ view outlined in Lazar, “Accommodating Options”.
- 25.
Of course, the difficulty will be how to individuate beneficiaries. Take giving to charity: is it only supererogatory to give to the charity that does the most good for the amount we give? If we consider the beneficiaries in this case to be same—that is, ‘recipients of my charity donation’—then my account would say that it would not be supererogatory to give to a less efficient charity. However, if we consider the beneficiaries of different charities to be distinct, then my account declares that giving to even an inefficient charity is good enough to be considered supererogatory. I do not propose to settle the question here.
- 26.
Heyd explores how it is a core part of the concept of supererogation that we are able to apply discretion over the beneficiary of our actions in his “Ethical Universalism, Justice, and Favouritism”.
- 27.
Given that it is a friend’s life at stake this time, it may be suggested that we are required to spend £5 to save their life. The amount can be changed to a figure where it is thought to be permissible not to spend the money to save their life (and the cost of the gift larger than this amount); alternatively the example could be changed so that the beneficiary is a stranger—importantly the same stranger in both option (2*) and (3*).
- 28.
Driver, “The Suberogatory,” 286.
- 29.
Forrester, “Some Remarks on Obligation, Permission, and Supererogation,” 225. She also includes, to my mind highly controversially, “such morally offensive practices as slavery and human sacrifice, when these are condoned in one’s society” (Forrester, 225).
- 30.
Mellema also uses the term “offence”, defining suberogatory actions in terms of praise and blame; as actions that are blameworthy to do and not praiseworthy not to do (Mellema, “Quasi-Supererogation,” 145).
- 31.
Chisholm and Sosa, “Intrinsic Preferability and the Problem of Supererogation,” 326.
- 32.
Chisholm and Sosa, 326.
- 33.
Driver, “The Suberogatory.” Even Driver, who defends the possibility of morally charged situations—where we face the option of either doing something supererogatory or something suberogatory—allows that there are occasions where the omission of a supererogatory act is not suberogatory, but rather “perfectly fine” (Driver, 290).
- 34.
Some like Lazar agree with me about the relevance of comparative costs (Lazar, “Accommodating Options.”), as well as the importance of agent-centered options both to favor our own interests (that is, where we can take into account the cost to ourselves) and also to sacrifice them (that is, we are allowed to do what leaves us worse off, within reason). Nevertheless, this view, unlike mine, fails to make room for suberogation. It simply rules out as permissible actions where there are better moral alternatives that are less costly, as costly or only marginally more costly. By allowing on my view that such actions could well be permissible (as they could be ‘within your rights’), I can meet the desiderata above.
- 35.
I focus here on more costly, less good options being suberogatory, leaving aside whether or not the worst permissible action should never, sometimes, or always be considered suberogatory. It is beyond the scope of this paper to give a precise formulation of suberogation. However, it should be noted that no specific position needs to be taken on the question of the worst permissible alternative in order to meet the three desiderata laid out.
- 36.
Driver, “The Suberogatory,” 295.
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Benn, C. (2023). The Evaluative Condition for Supererogation. In: Heyd, D. (eds) Handbook of Supererogation. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3633-5_11
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