Philosophy

Events

“Virtue and the Demands of Morality” by Joel Martinez (Lewis & Clark College)

Date: March 11 2011, 3:30pm Location: JRHH 202

J.O.  Urmson (1958) recognized that merely providing a criterion of right action is insufficient for capturing common sense morality.  Providing a criterion of right action helps us give an account of 1) the permitted (actions that are neither right nor wrong), 2) the obligatory (actions that are wrong not to do), 3) the forbidden (actions that are wrong to do).  However, there is another class of actions that forms an important part of common sense morality that cannot be captured by the standard three-fold deontic classification.  That is, there are ways of behaving that are neither required nor prohibited, but in being laudable they are not merely permissible.  These are supererogatory actions; actions that go above and beyond the call of duty.

Recently, there has been a discussion as to whether virtue ethics can capture the common sense notion of supererogation. In this paper, I argue that there is no compelling reason why virtue ethics ought to give an account of the supererogatory.   The argument that supports the claim that virtue ethics needs to account for the supererogatory rests on a fundamental confusion about the virtue ethical account of right action.  That is, philosophers who argue that virtue ethics ought to offer a virtue ethical account of supererogation mistakenly take the virtue ethical criterion of right action to tell us what our obligations are.   But, this is a mistake. It is an easy one to make, though, because so many prominent virtue ethicists have felt comfortable using deontic notions.  In this paper, I explain why this is a mistake and point the way to a better and more pure virtue ethical approach to understanding the actions of heroes and saints.  In the end, I think the virtue ethicist should jettison the notion of supererogation.  However, I think this is a small price to pay and it need not threaten the virtue ethical project of conceptualizing common sense morality.