Between Evil and Monstrosity
Acts are often judged by moral philosophers to fall into two categories; permissible acts and obligatory acts. That which is permissible is that which is okay to do, like eating ice cream. That which is obligatory is that which one must do, like keep promises {all else held equal}. This framework makes no prima facie distinction between acts and omissions. The permissibility of eating ice cream is the same kind of permissibility of not eating ice cream, the obligation to keep your promises is the same type of obligation as the obligation not to commit arbitrary acts of cruelty. Despite that not eating ice cream, and not being cruel, concern acts untaken.
While people are likely to agree that there are things you can do and things you must do, that classification is not granular enough to be lived by. Other categories may be suggested. A common one concerns going above and beyond, so called supererogation. This is an act which is praiseworthy, excellent, esteemed, but not obligatory. The canonical example, from Urmsons Saints and Heroes (1958) is diving onto a grenade to save ones comrades in a battle. The choice to do such a thing is exalted, and is called a supererogatory act.
Nevertheless, in order for an act to count as supererogatory, it must be classified as a choice. If that same soldier was threatened, with the certain outcome, that his family would be shot if he did not sacrifice himself for the good of his fellows, his action would be seen as coerced in some sense. And that coercion, rightly, monstrous. Giving up all of ones material wealth to a charity is another example, laudable if someone does it willingly, monstrous if they are compelled to do so at gunpoint. Regardless of how laudable the soldier or the saints actions are, the state of things which compels them to behave in that way consigns such sainthood to the dustbin of the tragic.
What I want to consider in this discussion is precisely that sense of monstrosity. Applying an obligation to go above and beyond, requiring people to act in an exalted fashion. I will call a state of things which requires people to go above and beyond monstrous.
I have not specified the scope of state of things intentionally, as the scope of moral evaluation simpliciter is as broad as all possible actions of collections of humans. The decision to commit a vengeful murder of a charity worker is an immoral one, whether that murder is attributed to a dictator, their firing squad, or the institutions which compel such acts.
Moreover, in my prior discussion, I had construed a compulsion for someone to act in a supererogatory fashion in exclusively coercive terms, namely with the threat of violence. I think this assumption can be relaxed to a broader sense of compulsion. In that regard, an ideology which compels people toward acts of supererogation, to each persons detriment, would also be monstrous. I will pause to consider that.
The first thing to note is that the scope of moral evaluation concerns collections of moral agents and their properties the political rule which forces the execution of a noble charity worker is as unjust as the act of execution. An ideology can be considered as a composite of such rules, both explicit and implicit. In that regard, if we would like to judge a political rule as placing requirements on people, we would then need to be able to judge an ideology as equally capable of placing such requirements.
That then allows us to consider under what conditions an ideology could be considered monstrous, insofar as it places requirements on people to do the supererogatory. While the course of the previous discussion had particular agents acts construed as monstrous or not, it is difficult to say an ideology is culpable in the same manner that a moral agent would be for a monstrous act, simply because it is not an agent in the same sense that a human is. Can it count as a doer of evil if it isnt a human?
I believe this is a false question, while an ideology isnt an agent, neither are political rules or laws, and we judge their moral value by the acts which they engender. A law which enables hiring discrimination will be considered unjust to the extent it allows people to act in accordance with its principles. I thus believe its appropriate to consider an ideology monstrous when its constitutive principles require acts of supererogation. A system of belief functioning as a gun to everyones head, compelling them to give all of their worldly possessions away, is monstrous in the same manner as any particular threat that functions the same way.
It is then important to consider the nature of the compulsions that an ideology may place upon a person. The compulsion cannot be considered a literal gun to a head, as ideas cannot hold weapons. It must thus be a belief held in a manner that strongly constrains someones actions. While the psychological origins of such a belief are important to consider in any particular case, the nature of such a belief as a strong constrainer of someones actions is the operative principle that allows that beliefs containing ideology to be judged as monstrous.
How strongly someones actions are constrained by the state of things is a continuum. A strong constraint on actions will be present when people can be reasonably and predominantly expected to fall in accord with the constraint. For this part of the discussion, it is granted that a person can practically choose to obey or disobey the constraint placed upon them, and they must be aware of the constraint. In that sense, a person can choose to disobey an order given at gunpoint, and then be shot. If they were unaware of the gun held to their head, they would not count as making a coerced choice in this sense, since they are simply not offered the choice to obey or disobey. On one end of the continuum are the strongest constraints if you do not act in accordance with the principle, something will be ruined. This might be your death, the death of loved ones, the end of a civilization On the other end, are mild inconveniences your tap water might be a bit too warm to enjoy drinking for a day. In order for an ideology to serve as a compulsion, the threat its principles present need not be actualized, only the belief that the threatened action will occur is required.
Generically ideologies are followed without the constant awareness of what violating their principles will engender. People believe that promises must be kept without specific knowledge of the result of breaking any particular promise. Someone can then be compelled to act in accordance with an ideology by its inherent normative force, rather than the threat of violating it. A conception of being required to follow a norm cannot terminate in awareness of an underlying specific threat that violating that norm would cause generically we believe that following a principle is right, wrong, okay, justified, understandable etc. without awareness of precisely why and what the results are. We are thus compelled to act in the manner we do through a more nebulous sense of awareness of the ideologies we inhabit. While we are aware that bad things will happen if the vague principles of the society we live in are violated too much, we act in accordance with those rules without any specific threat being given. The sense of requirement placed upon agents by an ideology must then not terminate in awareness of any specific action, and more broadly it concerns an immersion and identification of an agent with the social milieu of that ideology.
Most people follow most norms of the society they live in, and thus a strong constraint on peoples actions should be inferred. The nature of this strong constraint must therefore be different from the awareness of violating such a constraint yielding ruin and horror. The absence of awareness of a specific threat construes the strong constraints which explain our collective compliance to an implicit social order as rendering it practically impossible to behave otherwise. Which is not to say impossible to behave otherwise, but very unreasonable to expect from anyone given the state of things. If it becomes reasonable to expect people to violate constitutive norms of the ideology of their social milieu, that ideology {or its social milieus} days are numbered, as when people expect themselves to act in discord with a principle the principle is simply no longer collectively enacted or believed.
The cohesion of a society, in a particular form, demands a regularity of collective action that places strong constraints on an individuals imagination of, and desire to enact, ways to live otherwise. This is a form of practical impossibility - the practical impossibility of living otherwise saturates any society that is capable of sustaining itself long-term.
While that speaks to practical impossibility of acting otherwise in the aggregate, that does not provide a measure of when someones actions are constrained by an impossibility of that sort. Someone will tend to be acting in this manner when it is difficult for them to imagine living in a style which is contrary to the state of things. Whether that is because of inherent logistical difficulties in what is imagined, the difficulties of imagining it, or incompetence on the part of the imaginer is irrelevant, all that matters is the impediment to imagine.
Notably, what might be called our moral imagination is decoupled from considerations of practical possibility. Which is to say that its relatively easy to imagine how things might be better, how things might be worse, what is exalted or what is inconsiderate, regardless of how these things may be achieved, or whether they can be in the first place. The nebulous hope for world peace is a noble hope to have, even if it is a manifestation of the moral imagination. We aspire to the heights of our moral imagination, even when achieving those heights is practically impossible.
The air of naivety that surrounds decontextualized hope, for world peace or end world hunger, occurs in part because it marks the decoupling of the moral imagination from the state of things. The state of things makes it prohibitively difficult to achieve the heights of moral imagination, and as was seen before, prohibitively difficult to imagine living in a manner which achieves those heights.
The norms that enable the cohesion of society in its current form may be just or unjust. Challenging a particular one may unravel an institution every suffragette and rebel slave acted in accordance with what is right for humanity as a whole, even if the conditions prior to their actions rendered it practically impossible for them to come to fruition. Indeed, the mark of such transformative collective acts is to make what is practically impossible become practically possible, and thus undermine the horrors inherent in the social fabric.
Systemic issues that require unjust differentials of power totally saturate our societies and institutions. Every person will have realized that things can be better even if they dont know how to go about achieving that. Or even if they believe its not practically possible that the world be set more to right. Our moral imaginations compel us to rise to the heights of our halos. To attempt to bring about the practically impossible when it is right to do so. A consistent failure to make the practically impossible practically possible marks the irrelevance of someones moral imagination to their life. That things can always be imagined better is an inherent feature of human life, and that there will be systemic issues an inherent feature of human societies. The distinction in operating principles between the world of our moral imaginations and the one we live in will exist so long as what is imagined is not real.
The failure to make the practically impossible become possible is more than reasonable to expect. Our moral aspirations are typically marked by failure, we do not live in ways that will bring about the better world we imagine. While this is correct, appealing to the inherent mismatch of ideals with reality is a cop out, and serves as an explanation for any impermissible act consistent with the operative principles of a society that allows it. Which is to say, it exculpates any moral evil imaginable. A principle that exculpates any moral evil is, definitively, evil. But to act otherwise towards any systemic issue is to act contrary to the confines of the practically possible.
Therein lies the rub, if one sacrifices ones moral imagination against systemic injustice on the altar of practicality, one exculpates all evils. But if one believes that we are required not to forsake it, one believes in an ideology that requires the supererogatory of humans, and is thus monstrous.
The perennial condition of humanity and our societies will embed the horrors of injustice in the operative principles of any society, and thus each person faces a choice between whether they allow themselves a way to exculpate arbitrary evil or commit themselves to the inherent monstrosity of human life. We face the choice between allowing devilry or requiring the angelic, and humanity falls off this tightrope of right action either way.
While people are likely to agree that there are things you can do and things you must do, that classification is not granular enough to be lived by. Other categories may be suggested. A common one concerns going above and beyond, so called supererogation. This is an act which is praiseworthy, excellent, esteemed, but not obligatory. The canonical example, from Urmsons Saints and Heroes (1958) is diving onto a grenade to save ones comrades in a battle. The choice to do such a thing is exalted, and is called a supererogatory act.
Nevertheless, in order for an act to count as supererogatory, it must be classified as a choice. If that same soldier was threatened, with the certain outcome, that his family would be shot if he did not sacrifice himself for the good of his fellows, his action would be seen as coerced in some sense. And that coercion, rightly, monstrous. Giving up all of ones material wealth to a charity is another example, laudable if someone does it willingly, monstrous if they are compelled to do so at gunpoint. Regardless of how laudable the soldier or the saints actions are, the state of things which compels them to behave in that way consigns such sainthood to the dustbin of the tragic.
What I want to consider in this discussion is precisely that sense of monstrosity. Applying an obligation to go above and beyond, requiring people to act in an exalted fashion. I will call a state of things which requires people to go above and beyond monstrous.
I have not specified the scope of state of things intentionally, as the scope of moral evaluation simpliciter is as broad as all possible actions of collections of humans. The decision to commit a vengeful murder of a charity worker is an immoral one, whether that murder is attributed to a dictator, their firing squad, or the institutions which compel such acts.
Moreover, in my prior discussion, I had construed a compulsion for someone to act in a supererogatory fashion in exclusively coercive terms, namely with the threat of violence. I think this assumption can be relaxed to a broader sense of compulsion. In that regard, an ideology which compels people toward acts of supererogation, to each persons detriment, would also be monstrous. I will pause to consider that.
The first thing to note is that the scope of moral evaluation concerns collections of moral agents and their properties the political rule which forces the execution of a noble charity worker is as unjust as the act of execution. An ideology can be considered as a composite of such rules, both explicit and implicit. In that regard, if we would like to judge a political rule as placing requirements on people, we would then need to be able to judge an ideology as equally capable of placing such requirements.
That then allows us to consider under what conditions an ideology could be considered monstrous, insofar as it places requirements on people to do the supererogatory. While the course of the previous discussion had particular agents acts construed as monstrous or not, it is difficult to say an ideology is culpable in the same manner that a moral agent would be for a monstrous act, simply because it is not an agent in the same sense that a human is. Can it count as a doer of evil if it isnt a human?
I believe this is a false question, while an ideology isnt an agent, neither are political rules or laws, and we judge their moral value by the acts which they engender. A law which enables hiring discrimination will be considered unjust to the extent it allows people to act in accordance with its principles. I thus believe its appropriate to consider an ideology monstrous when its constitutive principles require acts of supererogation. A system of belief functioning as a gun to everyones head, compelling them to give all of their worldly possessions away, is monstrous in the same manner as any particular threat that functions the same way.
It is then important to consider the nature of the compulsions that an ideology may place upon a person. The compulsion cannot be considered a literal gun to a head, as ideas cannot hold weapons. It must thus be a belief held in a manner that strongly constrains someones actions. While the psychological origins of such a belief are important to consider in any particular case, the nature of such a belief as a strong constrainer of someones actions is the operative principle that allows that beliefs containing ideology to be judged as monstrous.
How strongly someones actions are constrained by the state of things is a continuum. A strong constraint on actions will be present when people can be reasonably and predominantly expected to fall in accord with the constraint. For this part of the discussion, it is granted that a person can practically choose to obey or disobey the constraint placed upon them, and they must be aware of the constraint. In that sense, a person can choose to disobey an order given at gunpoint, and then be shot. If they were unaware of the gun held to their head, they would not count as making a coerced choice in this sense, since they are simply not offered the choice to obey or disobey. On one end of the continuum are the strongest constraints if you do not act in accordance with the principle, something will be ruined. This might be your death, the death of loved ones, the end of a civilization On the other end, are mild inconveniences your tap water might be a bit too warm to enjoy drinking for a day. In order for an ideology to serve as a compulsion, the threat its principles present need not be actualized, only the belief that the threatened action will occur is required.
Generically ideologies are followed without the constant awareness of what violating their principles will engender. People believe that promises must be kept without specific knowledge of the result of breaking any particular promise. Someone can then be compelled to act in accordance with an ideology by its inherent normative force, rather than the threat of violating it. A conception of being required to follow a norm cannot terminate in awareness of an underlying specific threat that violating that norm would cause generically we believe that following a principle is right, wrong, okay, justified, understandable etc. without awareness of precisely why and what the results are. We are thus compelled to act in the manner we do through a more nebulous sense of awareness of the ideologies we inhabit. While we are aware that bad things will happen if the vague principles of the society we live in are violated too much, we act in accordance with those rules without any specific threat being given. The sense of requirement placed upon agents by an ideology must then not terminate in awareness of any specific action, and more broadly it concerns an immersion and identification of an agent with the social milieu of that ideology.
Most people follow most norms of the society they live in, and thus a strong constraint on peoples actions should be inferred. The nature of this strong constraint must therefore be different from the awareness of violating such a constraint yielding ruin and horror. The absence of awareness of a specific threat construes the strong constraints which explain our collective compliance to an implicit social order as rendering it practically impossible to behave otherwise. Which is not to say impossible to behave otherwise, but very unreasonable to expect from anyone given the state of things. If it becomes reasonable to expect people to violate constitutive norms of the ideology of their social milieu, that ideology {or its social milieus} days are numbered, as when people expect themselves to act in discord with a principle the principle is simply no longer collectively enacted or believed.
The cohesion of a society, in a particular form, demands a regularity of collective action that places strong constraints on an individuals imagination of, and desire to enact, ways to live otherwise. This is a form of practical impossibility - the practical impossibility of living otherwise saturates any society that is capable of sustaining itself long-term.
While that speaks to practical impossibility of acting otherwise in the aggregate, that does not provide a measure of when someones actions are constrained by an impossibility of that sort. Someone will tend to be acting in this manner when it is difficult for them to imagine living in a style which is contrary to the state of things. Whether that is because of inherent logistical difficulties in what is imagined, the difficulties of imagining it, or incompetence on the part of the imaginer is irrelevant, all that matters is the impediment to imagine.
Notably, what might be called our moral imagination is decoupled from considerations of practical possibility. Which is to say that its relatively easy to imagine how things might be better, how things might be worse, what is exalted or what is inconsiderate, regardless of how these things may be achieved, or whether they can be in the first place. The nebulous hope for world peace is a noble hope to have, even if it is a manifestation of the moral imagination. We aspire to the heights of our moral imagination, even when achieving those heights is practically impossible.
The air of naivety that surrounds decontextualized hope, for world peace or end world hunger, occurs in part because it marks the decoupling of the moral imagination from the state of things. The state of things makes it prohibitively difficult to achieve the heights of moral imagination, and as was seen before, prohibitively difficult to imagine living in a manner which achieves those heights.
The norms that enable the cohesion of society in its current form may be just or unjust. Challenging a particular one may unravel an institution every suffragette and rebel slave acted in accordance with what is right for humanity as a whole, even if the conditions prior to their actions rendered it practically impossible for them to come to fruition. Indeed, the mark of such transformative collective acts is to make what is practically impossible become practically possible, and thus undermine the horrors inherent in the social fabric.
Systemic issues that require unjust differentials of power totally saturate our societies and institutions. Every person will have realized that things can be better even if they dont know how to go about achieving that. Or even if they believe its not practically possible that the world be set more to right. Our moral imaginations compel us to rise to the heights of our halos. To attempt to bring about the practically impossible when it is right to do so. A consistent failure to make the practically impossible practically possible marks the irrelevance of someones moral imagination to their life. That things can always be imagined better is an inherent feature of human life, and that there will be systemic issues an inherent feature of human societies. The distinction in operating principles between the world of our moral imaginations and the one we live in will exist so long as what is imagined is not real.
The failure to make the practically impossible become possible is more than reasonable to expect. Our moral aspirations are typically marked by failure, we do not live in ways that will bring about the better world we imagine. While this is correct, appealing to the inherent mismatch of ideals with reality is a cop out, and serves as an explanation for any impermissible act consistent with the operative principles of a society that allows it. Which is to say, it exculpates any moral evil imaginable. A principle that exculpates any moral evil is, definitively, evil. But to act otherwise towards any systemic issue is to act contrary to the confines of the practically possible.
Therein lies the rub, if one sacrifices ones moral imagination against systemic injustice on the altar of practicality, one exculpates all evils. But if one believes that we are required not to forsake it, one believes in an ideology that requires the supererogatory of humans, and is thus monstrous.
The perennial condition of humanity and our societies will embed the horrors of injustice in the operative principles of any society, and thus each person faces a choice between whether they allow themselves a way to exculpate arbitrary evil or commit themselves to the inherent monstrosity of human life. We face the choice between allowing devilry or requiring the angelic, and humanity falls off this tightrope of right action either way.
Comments (78)
If we relieve a person of full responsibility, why not do the same for the ideology they followed? The poor ideology was shaped by this it that circumstance. Blame the circumstances. This opens up into blaming everything for everything.
Ultimately, there's an opposition between understanding and judging. The more you understand, the harder it becomes to judge. The more you judge, the harder it becomes to understand. We forever swing between these poles, the extremes of which are meaningless.
That's an opposition between prejudice and understanding. A Judge is a Judge because they understand the diction of the law.
not really sure what to make of your post other than I am glad that I don't live by such superfluous rigidity as you detail in your post. The way you detail life within it is very strange to me.
Why?
Mostly because morality imposes immorality upon the human, the human which came before either. Morality details what part of YOU is utter shit that needs to be killed off.
No part of me is trash, nor will any part of me be killed off for anyone other than me and my own purpose.
Sure I have decisions I live by, but even then they're soft limiters...
The highest and most powerful are always above the law and out of sight of the law. Just as the highest presentment of man always comes through some Crime or another. Because they are the people who assume rights to new values outside the norm of equality...
We all break laws, some of us just don't reslly care about them to begin with... let the ones who are intimidated the law be intimidated. If I want to do something, I'll likely do it... except maybe things like acting on the urge to drive my car through a building...
More or less, if I were a hacker I'd be a greyhat.
You're providing no reason for anyone else to care about what you're saying. Which speaks to a misunderstanding of how normativity and morality couple, rather than a rejection of morals as the norms as they are. If you can give me a reason to care about an island such as yourself, I will, though I would wonder, in that case, why such a singular being would need to share their perspective to begin with.
Your rigidity suggests that because I only consider what my life demands that my life demands only me...
Logic collapses in on itself and is circular. Just as the selfless person is acting based off their own desirous needs, so too is the selfish person.
I'm glad I know how to drive a straight line down a curved road.
You can call anyone rigid when they disagree with you. Absolutely pointless argument strategy. How're you going to re-evaluate all the values with this lacklustre display.
In otherwords you need a reason to care...
Same here, it's just not your reasons.
And perhaps you care about certain things in a certain light because you accept the premise that part of what's in you is utter shit that needs repression and ignoring. And I reject it that premise.
Yes. A reason to care, in the context of a philosophical discussion, is an argument.
Quoting DifferentiatingEgg
You expressed a personal preference here, without argument.
Quoting DifferentiatingEgg
And here. Only this time you called me rigid at the same time.
If all you're interested in doing is stating your values and insulting me, kindly leave the marketplace ye overman, before the mall cops come.
To kill a charity worker out of revenge may be immoral, doesn't mean it wasn't right...
Like giving Socrates hemlock for corruption of the youth.
Hard limits means all killing is wrong and people would be incapable of breaking the hard limit. Soft limits are bypassed with a certain regulation regarding when it's correct.
People who pretend morality is a hard limiter are *rigid* because they're mechanical and predictable in action.
There is always a time and place for the animal in man to run wild.
You're probably not used to arguing formally, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
Quoting DifferentiatingEgg
When you say something like this, you need to distinguish right from immoral. An analogy like this:
Quoting DifferentiatingEgg
Doesn't cut it. All you've done in it is construe that giving Socrates hemlock is a consequence of a norm, which judged his conduct as wrong.
Quoting DifferentiatingEgg
The first bit of your sentence "hard limits means all killing is wrong" makes some kind of sense, because it's very easy to find a defeater for any context invariant moral claim, eg "killing is wrong" might not speak to acts of self defence. However the latter statement "people would be incapable of breaking the hard limit", either refers to finding such a defeater - which makes sense - or says it's in principle impossible for a universally binding moral principle to be broken. In the latter case, that misunderstands what a norm is - you can either follow them or not, if you couldn't help but follow a norm then it's pointless to consider it a choice.
The latter "choicelessness" is referenced in my OP.
Do you? Seems more like a tanget to get off track... If I want to murder a charity worker who happened to do something that ended up killing my family... but morality said they go free... guess what's going to happen?
I will burn that persons world to the ground. And I'll feel good doing it. Because it will be the desired quality of what I want...
Might has always made right...
Whether it's the tyranny of masses or the tyrant.
All morality is baked in through thousands of years of grotesque punishment...
Capital Punishment and Lethal Injection are Okay after all...
So if someone injects themself lethally into another person's life... ah only the State gets to decide for you... No. I solve my own problems without the need of a state...
Alright. You take what someone has said and try to represent their argument in your own terms. You do so in a manner which tries to make the best of their argument, at the very least understand it in a manner your interlocutor might be able to see. That's very much like providing a bridge from your vantage point to theirs, through skilful exegesis of their work and your vantage point on it.
Then you use that interpretation to criticise what someone has said.
This often comes down to doing a lot of very fiddly disambiguation in terms and their scope of application. You might enjoy reading the essay I referenced in the OP, Heroes and Saints, for a very good example of it!
I guess, my point is, the vast majority of who I am prefers not even "thinking" but rather "doing" ... the only reason I practice philosophy and logic is so when I have to think, I can out think others. I prefer not thinking though. I'm relatively immune to feeling shame and guilt.
Perhaps I even missed the points of your discussion really. What I mostly got from reading your post, was that "Damn this guys lives by a ton of rules (that I don't)."
For example when I sit down in a room, I don't observe things and think about them... I just observe things, dont read the text on em, don't care that its a book or a chair or a flower, I don't match nouns to things, I don't put everything in its place with its labels...
The things I like all involve muscle memory to "think" to feel your way through something. Anything where I can leave my mind be at rest so it can be everywhere all at once...
I believe I'm sympathetic to its conclusions -- in philosopher terms it makes me think of Kierkegaard's tension between Abraham as a Knight of Faith or a moral monster. I get the same sort of feeling here between two bad choices, hence a dilemma or paradox.
Quoting fdrake
I often find myself saying on TPF, "I'm not convinced that there is any room for supererogation in your moral system."
Quoting fdrake
The wrinkle here is that you are shifting agents. Magnanimous giving is supererogatory for the person giving, whereas coerced giving is monstrous for the person coercing.
Quoting fdrake
...And when you phrase it in this way it presents as a single state of affairs with two different possible circumstances. The state of affairs is that he gives a large sum of money, and the two possible circumstances are 1) that he gives money freely and 2) that he gives money under duress. But on a classical view such as Aristotle's these are two starkly different actions, not one action with two possible accidental circumstances. More simply: what makes (1) supererogatory also makes (2) non-supererogatory.
Quoting fdrake
I agree that "supererogation" should not be coerced or compelled, but I also don't think the scare quotes can be omitted, because I don't think coerced or compelled acts are supererogatory.
Quoting fdrake
Note that you have here shifted from supererogation to constraint, which are in fact two different concepts. I think this shift is important to canvass and assess, as it matters whether you are arguing against compelled supererogation or just compulsion per se. This relates to the point below about obligation vs. supererogation.
Quoting fdrake
I.e. One can act without consequentialist motivations.
Quoting fdrake
Sure, but aren't we ignoring the other side of the coin? Namely that appealing to the inherent mismatch of ideals with reality is a cop out, and serves as an explanation for any act inconsistent with the operative principles of a society that disallows it? As in, there was a downside to the French Revolution, and I'm not convinced your construal is able to come to terms with that downside. The promotion of an ideal is not unobjectionably good, given both that there is moral worth to the stability of the status quo, and that false ideals are very often promoted.
Quoting fdrake
But your critique of the supererogatory was grounded in coercion and compulsion. I realize you tried to argue that compulsion can be subtle, but if subtle compulsion is monstrous, and every moral belief involves subtle compulsion, then morality is itself monstrous. Ergo: those who think humans should try to be better are monstrous, which strikes me as absurd. Indeed, I believe insufficient attention has been paid to the difference between the obligatory and the supererogatory, given that your critique would apparently make the obligatory equally monstrous.
The crux here may be the question of whether every form of pressure is a form of illicit compulsion, including argument and persuasion, and even expressed normative beliefs. Obviously this is a central concern for individualistic societies.
What I would suggest is missing here is Solzhenitsyn's point:
When the problem is construed as "My moral imagination vs. systemic injustice," one quickly forgets that the line between good and evil is more complicated than that. But feel free to redirect my focus if I am not honing in on the nub you are interested in.
Isn't that part of the tension in the OP?
I'm thinking of the teleological suspension of the ethical here...
Quoting Leontiskos
And yet it may be true.
As I understand it the OP wants to critique (compelled) supererogation without critiquing obligation. My point there was that I don't see how obligation doesn't fall under the same shadow as supererogation with respect to compulsion, given the argumentation.
Quoting Moliere
Yes, that is what I was getting at.
Quoting Leontiskos
The rough idea I was playing with is as follows, there's a big asymmetry between obligation and supererogation. People are compelled to follow their obligations with a binding normative force, if they choose otherwise they choose wrong. People are not so compelled with super-erogation, if they choose not to dive on the grenade to save the squad they did something A-OK.
The broader tension, which I tried to gesture toward with the latter half of the post, is that we seem to be that the state of things requires acts of supererogation to improve. We need to be saints sometimes to make a better world. And if we need to be saints sometimes, I've analogised that to compelling your squadmate to jump on the grenade.
The supererogatory is a gateway to the horrifying state of things. We live in a world where no one can be a saint, but everyone needs to be. So, the tension goes, you can choose to compel others to jump on the grenade, or you can reject that we need to be saints sometimes. And if it was previously established that the only way things can improve is that if some people are saints sometimes... that combination means that everyone is fine to reject sainthood, even if it destroys our very moral fibre.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't believe I was shifting agents, I was describing an act as supererogatory. Treating supererogation as a modality on par with obligation and permissibility. In a similar manner I considered acts as saintly or exemplary, and not moral agents. The state of things which is monstrous, in that instance, is compelling an action that would otherwise be considered above and beyond the call of duty. Notably I am not intending to construe a specific agent as monstrous or supererogatory, or even just acts as monstrous or supererogatory, I'm trying to say that a broader state of things, which is largely placeholder term, can be considered monstrous when it forces supererogation on people for things to get better at all.
If it's some kind of intuition pump for you, the background I'm drawing on to delimit the scope of ethical judgements is a heritage of philosophical pessimism, which tends to treat arbitrary things, paradigmatically existence itself, as the kind of thing which can fail or be wanting. I think this is relatively comprehensible, though I wouldn't want to stake my metaphysical career on it. "Things are shit", "Life sucks", perfectly cromulent everyday valuations. I'll trust the type of them is alright.
The perspective I've adopted in the OP is also quite orthogonal to considering the excellent qualities of moral agents, it's very act focussed. Though, again notably, I've defended absolutely nothing in terms of the results of following ethical principles for a reason, or taking a particular meta-ethical stance towards those judgements - except construing things that resemble morals as having a mundane normative force, which you might not like if you're a divine command flavour of Aristotle fan.
Quoting fdrake
Okay, understood, but does it? Couldn't we also improve by better understanding our obligations, or by better realizing a capacity to fulfill them? Those forms of improvement seem to have little to do with supererogation. I think we have to bring in your idea of moral imagination:
Quoting fdrake
Is moral imagination bound up with supererogation? Or with obligation? Or perhaps neither? What is the end that moral imagination conceives?
Quoting fdrake
Aren't you aiming at the paradox wherein the supererogatory is obligatory? That we are obliged to improve and supererogation is necessary in order to improve; therefore the supererogatory is obligatory?
What I was trying to say above is that I see a contradiction, not a paradox. If I were able to see a very clear case for why each side of the contradiction must be upheld, then perhaps I would be made to consider it a paradox.
Quoting fdrake
When I said that you were shifting agents, I was not imagining that you were not talking about acts. Acts are the acts of an agent, after all.
So what is the object of supererogation? And what is the object of monstrosity? An agent? An act? A broader state of things? Namely, do they have the same genus of object?
And what is a monstrosity after all? Is it anything more than a matter of constraining or compelling?
Quoting fdrake
And I would surely disagree with the attribution of moral properties to non-moral realities, but you don't press this angle very hard in the OP, and it is but one piece of a sprawling OP.
At a more general level, while I recognize that modern conceptions of morality produce highly paradoxical tensions, I think this is due to flaws in the moral conceptions themselves. I grant that morality involves tension, but not contradictions.
I apologize if this is a crude strawman, but suppose someone said
Quoting fdrake
On the contrary, I find modern morality excessively moral; excessively scrupulous. I don't think you find that extreme in traditional moral approaches, whether religious or philosophical. The organic approaches do not have such sharp edges. For example: you sin, you recognize that you sinned, you go to confession, you make reparation, and you simply move on with your life. I think there is plenty of meta-ethics in the OP, such as the presupposition that "improvement" justifies compelled supererogation. I don't find that extreme presupposition in traditional approaches.
---
Edit:
Quoting fdrake
Is that a real dilemma or a faux dilemma? Is every moral philosopher ultimately either proposing that we allow devilry or else that we require the super-human?
No, and that is an important fulcrum for all ethics. An evil ideology is only as evil as the acts and the actors that support that ideology.
Quoting fdrake
I think its a good question because we judge their moral value by the acts.
Quoting fdrake
I give us actors more credit. An ideology to the head is a powerful thing, but then, a gun would still overpower most people to betray that same ideology, most people, that is, who would succumb to an ideology in the first place.
And the fact that other people might profess their ideology despite some threatening to shoot them in their head shows both the greater power of ideology, and/ or the greater power of the free agent. It is the free agent that is compelling oneself that is the greatest power and really the first instance of something to judge morally.
And on the other hand, an ideology can be seen all the way through without compelling any action besides criticism.
Quoting fdrake
Damned if we do for sacrificial practicality, and damned if we do for non-sacrificial ideology.
Quoting fdrake
Right, but you dont see there are other ways? Cant there be ideologies that promote freedom, without any coercion? Maybe thats not an ideology anymore, if it leaves space for free choice? So then, is it possible to live ideology-free?
It can count as (natural) evil, but it can't count as a doer. So when you go on to say that an ideology isn't an agent, you are simultaneously saying that it isn't a doer, and hence is not a doer of evil.
We could say that rocks are evil insofar as rocks can kill people, either via moral agents or apart from them. But a law or an ideology really isn't like a rock. In that case we can prescind from the agency of the people who fashioned or uphold the law or ideology, but we can't pretend that the agency doesn't exist at all.
Something which "requires acts of supererogation" must be an agent (or a "doer"). This is because in order to require an act of supererogation one must understand what is obligatory and then require an act that is not obligatory. So a law could require supererogation via the agents who create it,[hide="*"](or more precisely, legislators could require supererogation via a law)[/hide] but a rock cannot require supererogation.** Or consider something that requires one to give all their earthly possessions away, namely death. Death is not requiring a supererogatory act, even though it does require us to give all our possessions away, and the reason it does not require a supererogatory act is because it possesses no agency. Someone can meet their death in a supererogatory way, but death does not require supererogation in requiring one to yield up all their possessions. At best the natural reality of death predisposes us to supererogatory acts, but does not require them.
A pure passion is never supererogatory, because "in order for an act to count as supererogatory, it must be classified as a choice," and (pure) passions are merely things that we suffer, things that happen to us. So when you claim that some reality without agency requires acts of supererogation, you seem to err twice, both in thinking that something without knowledge can require supererogatory acts, and in thinking that because someone undergoes a passionsay, of losing all their possessionsthey have therefore performed an act, and even a supererogatory act, namely the act of giving up all their possessions. One can lose without giving up.
Nevertheless, I agree that it is a "monstrosity" when someone requires as due what is in fact supererogatory. But it is not an inevitability. In the case you reference we should simply remind them that we are not obliged to "improve things," and certainly not according to their criteria. The same can be said to ourselves. When the day is done and it is time for sleep, even the atheist can say, "I am not God. It does not all depend on me."
** And in a more precise sense, coerced supererogation is not supererogatory, as noted above. So in the end even things which can implore acts of supererogation cannot require or demand them.
Yes, they are saints who want to bring about a better world.
The rub I was pointing at is that such actions are necessary to bring it about.
I think you could see "duty" as the moral floor, below which we should not sink, whereas the supererogatory is the moral ceiling, towards which we aspire. They are exemplary actions, by definition. People do not have to be exemplary. But they can be. They have that capability.
Alright. Do you imagine that the world would become a better place without some people behaving in an exemplary fashion?
I'm not trying to say that only acts of supererogation improve things, I'm saying that some acts of supererogation are required to improve things and trying to draw out a consequence.
Quoting Leontiskos
What I have in mind with a moral imagination is, roughly, a psychological and social concept. It's commonly held intuitions about what would make a better world. I believe there's remarkable regularity in these aspirations. Everyone will agree that the world would be better without needless starving to death, or without homelessness, or if people had more free time, or if medical science improves and becomes universally available to every human on Earth. They're very much motivating dreams that people work towards and try to bring into being through their acts.
I'm sure you can see the Christian theological undertones there, they are quite intentional. I trial ran this discussion with a priest.
Quoting Leontiskos
What is monstrous is any state of affairs that requires some people to act in a supererogatory fashion at some times in order to improve the world. Or in terms of the above, to act in accordance with their moral imagination. In @Pantagruel's terms...
Quoting Pantagruel
I'm making an argument that "the moral floor" is sinking, or too low, if you are only required to act in accordance with it. The minimum effort is not enough to attain what the minimum effort aims for, a kind world. If people act as they do in accordance with their moral imagination to be kind, for a kinder world, then the bar of duty isn't high enough. And because it's not high enough, existence compels us to a largely unachievable higher nature. This is monstrous, but not necessarily wrong.
That seems true. Morality ought to be melioristic. And in a sense, the whole idea of a moral ought is essentially supererogatory. I can see construing the low bar of duty as what has been recognized as a utilitarian-heuristic. But if that standard of action is not having adequate effect, that is when a new morality is called for. I guess the question is, who will acknowledge the superior moral imperative?
I read you as saying that things cannot improve without (compelled) supererogation, and that is what I was responding to. Do you say that things cannot improve without (compelled) supererogation?
Quoting fdrake
Okay, understood. I certainly agree that if we cannot think about how things might be better, then we will never effectively improve things. But I don't agree that thinking about how things might be better is necessarily supererogatory. Some parts of the moral imagination are supererogatory (both for the individual thinking and for the goals he is thinking), and some parts are not.
Quoting fdrake
Okay, interesting. I certainly see it, but I also disagree with Christians who would make the supererogatory obligatory. I'm a traditional Catholic in that sense. And I think things can improve without saints, just as bread can be edible without yeast. That's not to say that what is obligatory for a Christian is the same as what is obligatory for a non-Christian, but I don't think Christians should impose specifically Christian obligations on non-Christians. I don't know whether you would disagree with this.
So are you leaving TPF to become a monk after Eärendil? :smile:
Quoting fdrake
Okay, and I don't really agree with that, but I would distinguish "improvement." I would only agree with the claim
Quoting fdrake
Okay. Aristotle's way of phrasing that is to say that society cannot survive on justice alone. That if we do not bail out more water than we believe to be flowing into the boat then we will sink.
In any case, I agree with most of your claims in this final paragraph, so maybe I agree with your conclusion but disagree with some of the argumentation. ...Or else I am not reading it in a sufficiently poetic register.
Quoting fdrake
Is it something like Eliot's, "In order to arrive at what you are not / You must go through the way in which you are not"? Or, "When you stop growing you start dying"? Or that to give up the stretching and tension of transcendent aspirations is to have become subhuman?
Ultimately it is the Pelagian themes that worry me. The monstrosity takes a different form if God is tangential to the picture, for then there is no surgeon other than ourselves:
Quoting T. S. Eliot's East Coker
The "supererogation" takes on a very different form when one is a patient.
This is an interesting conversation, providing a different way into morality.
If I put the pieces on the table separately:
1. State of affairs in need of improvement
2. Same state of affairs includes the requirement of Superogatory acts to bring improvement.
3. An agent of change
4. Another agent who creates the state of requiring the superogatory act occur at all (the gun to the head).
5. You dont need 4. to be another agent if instead it is an ideology, in which case the agency behind the superogatory act is the agent of change in 3 abandoning their own sense of justice and rightness in order to get along and be practical.
Does this track?
The way I see it all, it all collapses into 3., the agent, the only location where one can find the monstrous or the superogatory or the obligatory or the permissive.
We have to allow ourselves remain slaves. We have to give our consent to an ideology. Whether an act is obligatory or permitted, by the time one physically acts, one has finished with the deliberation or assent of the state of affairs and instead, acts, inserting oneself into the state of affairs. Removing oneself as judge and creating the thing to be judged.
In the end, all deliberate acts, even most coerced acts (though not all so effective can the coercion be), only become an act, an object in the world, through consent.
There is no one or no where else besides the actor to seek full responsibility for most acts. This is of course complicated and still belongs on a continuum with a free fully responsible act, like a creator God might act, on one side, and a reflexive autonomic act on the other side, like a leaf turning toward the sun, a gasp for breath. Coerced acts, permitted acts, obligatory acts and superogatory acts are all mixtures of free and determined forces.
If I want to put a box on the table and it is on the floor, I have to walk to the box, bend at the waist, grasp, rise and place the box, hoping or assuming the table can support it and the floor will support me. I have no choice but to take these steps.
If I want to save my family from the Nazis, or from their sinful tendencies, I might have to step in front of a bullet, or hang on a cross to death.
These are all just acts, and like every act, the requirements are built into the nature of the things.
The person who decides to put the box on the table and the person who decides to step in front of the bullet may have both equally simply made a fully free, deliberated and responsible choice. Or they may be coerced.
If there is a gun to ones head forcing the box be put on the table, or a gun to ones head and family forcing you to face the Nazi gun to the chest and family, we are simply complicating the deliberation that might result in a free responsible act. We havent recharacterized what a superagotory act is.
This is hard for me to say.
I of course agree that any coercive means used to cause another to act, when the coercive means itself is unlawful (like a gun to the head) and/or the act to be coerced is unlawful (execute that innocent person or Ill kill your family), is monstrous.
But I disagree that an ideology can take the place of the person holding the gun to anyones head. That is the whole point of morality - our acts are ours. And moral acts only arise between personal agents. We get to hold the gun to our own heads, and in the moment we actually stand up to move the box, or step out in front of the bullet, all other agents are supplanted, we seize all the power and focus it on our efforts at enacting.
This is why I think it was Buber, who talked about how the Nazis and their concentration camps couldnt take away the only freedoms that matter. This is why Socrates willingly drank the hemlock.
Quoting fdrake
So if we apply this to a religion that threatens with hell, or that threatens non-religious people, I would agree that God holding the gun of hell to my head would never bring me to love him or know much more than hes like a Nazi, or that people who judge and condemn others using their religion as lawgiver, ideology setter, are no better.
I dont believe God is looking forward to judging us - we shoot ourselves in the foot and demand he pass judgment. So all of the talk of hell and punishment and eternal fire - these are of our own making, our own free will, and more like the physics of being a personal agent in this creation. The only coercion any and every religion and religious person should use is trust God.
Maybe we agree, and there is just a less significant difference regarding the definition of and role of ideology in moral action.
Nah I'm going back to the Society of St. Francis.
Quoting Leontiskos
I suppose more precisely I'm saying something like:
There are things which will not improve without some acts of supererogation. If someone believes that those things must improve, then they believe some acts of supererogation are required. The model I have of this is giving up your life as an activist for a noble cause - really a necessary cause, like making sure people don't starve to death. Or something like St. Francis' shame when he realised he had not hitherto spread the word of God to birds.
Quoting Leontiskos
I'm certain you would. I've spoken with several Christians who saw bringing about the kingdom of god as their greatest moral imperative, minimally a kind and just world, and roughly this is a secular version of "can there be a kingdom of god without saints to bring it about?", so if someone sees bringing about the kingdom of god as a moral imperative, there must be some obliged saintly acts.
I think that when you drill down to people's deep rooted moral convictions, people wish with most of their heart that the world was better, and act in a manner that they would like to see in that world as best as they can. Which is all well and good, it's just that if someone were to believe that one was obliged to do what one must to bring about that better state, one would then be committed to the supererogatory.
An example, this is very much the logic behind "doing your bit". Someone {usually incorrectly} sorts their recycling and doesn't go join a group to help with the supply side of climate crisis issues, 30 years of zealous recycling ever and we're no closer. "Doing your bit" was never enough. People will absolutely get irritated at those who recycle incorrectly, or don't recycle at all, even though they are also putting the wrong things in the wrong bins due to design failures, and much plastic that ends up in the right bins can't be recycled anyway. You can do your bit forever and it's fine, but "just fine" forever means the quality of forever degrades.
I will respond to the rest of your response later.
You seem to be at a real crossroads because of this issue.
Im going to step way, way back for a second.
What if ones only obligation is to please God? To attend to the fact that God loves you personally? What if the opportunity to perform a superogatory act for your fellow mans sake was just that, an opportunity, a gift to you, allowing you to assist in Gods creation of the world?
I do not think any of us are called to make the world a better place. We have to trust God on all of that.
This is not to say we dont have ample time on our hands to serve others, and must consent to many obligations to do so. This is not to say it doesnt please God when we love our neighbor or lay our lives down for them. But if our service and love actually improves the world, that is Gods doing, and he has only joined my act to his act of creating this world.
St. Francis was wrong if he really thought he had to worry about the birds. The biggest things, like the world, remain, as always, in Gods hands. And thats ok.
Without God, thats not ok, because we are the causes of the world needing improvement (I sort my plastics wrong all the time for instance, or otherwise sin). But as far as I can tell, without God, there is no hope for any improvement, no superogatory or other act that we could devise on our own to move any actually important needles in the direction of world improvement.
There may be more people that have easier lives today than did 100 years ago, or 1000 years ago, etc, but the world hasnt improved one bit since Cane quarreled with Abel, at least not on our own account. Its always been easy to lie, to steal, to murder and overall, its possible things are worse than ever.
If one gives ones life to save others, it is not the death that makes this act superogatory. Death is just one body moving through its changes like a seed falling from a tree. It is the persons choice to give his or her own life - the choice, that is the ingredient that makes the act superogatory. So if we add circumstances that would diminish this free choice, like coercive ideology, we simply dont have a superogatory act anymore.
So the notion of requiring superogatory acts as in coercing them, turns those acts into the act of the commander, not the agent who acts, unless the agent freely consents anyway, which makes it not a commanded act, but solely the agents act.
True faith and trust in God is a handing over of your life and this whole world with it, handing it back to God, be that a superogatory, obligatory, or better, magnanimous, act or otherwise.
I'm not a believer and have no interest in eschatology. Well that's a lie, I like eschatology.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Good sir, I believe this is cope.
Or just realism, meaning the fate of the world improvement certainly is not in our hands, no matter how much we think of our abilities - we are the ones who are tearing things apart.
Theres either God, or no reason to imagine a different world.
I cant tell if you are having a sort of crisis over this question or not.
If not, Ill leave you to it, as I see a proponent of any ideology qua ideology as a placeholder for an individual who isnt taking responsibility for their own life.
If you are, I hope you can find a way to improve things, or rid yourself of the task to do so.
I find this quite sad. You wouldn't want to imagine a better world just for the people in it?
Quoting Fire Ologist
No more than usual.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I already have rid myself of that responsibility, as have most of us. And we're right to. And we're falling.
Sad that I think this way, or sad for the state of human beings?
Quoting fdrake
Ok, so if youve rid yourself, then you arent sad that I think this way, you do as well.
We are falling. It is sad.
There is hope. Wish people saw that.
Both.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I often think things that I find sad.
Depends on what you mean by the world.
If you mean my family and neighbors and friends and the 50 yards of space that follows me around everywhere I go - I absolutely try to imagine how to make things the best I can think of for everyone I can.
If by world you mean the US, the Middle East, or the earth, or the future of mankind, Ive given up on those people - all are free to join my 50 yards and see if you like it here with me, but as soon as it gets bigger, and less and less people are influenced by my magnanimous ability to make things great, and no one is in control and everyone resorts back to savagery, and nuclear deterrents, and detente, and real politic, and questions about who is better and who is worse and who is victim and who is perpetrator - there is no hope that one of us or some group of us or some set of laws will ever make that go smoothly.
I exaggerate a bit here, but you see my point.
A friar, a gyrovague! That takes me back. Dominic and Francis were only ten years apart.
Quoting fdrake
Okay, but what are these "things" that cannot improve without some acts of supererogation? I think most religious people would agree that there are such things, but I don't see how something like feeding the hungry could be one of those things. Is it really true that starvation is something that cannot improve without acts of supererogation? Ironically, it may be that starvation is one of those issues that will never improve if it depends on supererogation.
The mirror of your argument is this: supererogation is difficult and rare, and therefore if things are to improve they should not depend on supererogation. Again granting your premise that some things do require supererogation, nevertheless I do not see how the basic goals of require supererogation. For example, it seems to me that the problem of hunger would certainly improve if everyone simply did their obligatory part. The notion that simple acts get us "no closer" to the goal is simply not true. Indeed, an important question is whether humans require unattainable goals in order to entertain hope, and whether they will cook up new unattainable goals when they become restless and stagnant.
Quoting fdrake
But note the word "their." There is no reason why supererogation cannot be imperative, but your OP is about compelled supererogation. I think what you probably mean to say is that one feels compelled to do something heroic. To say that they are compelled is stretching language too far. I can feel constrained or compelled to propose to the woman I love, but I am not in fact compelled to do so. There is no compulsion, strictly speaking.
Quoting fdrake
If this isn't a contradiction, then I would invite you to go ahead and define "supererogatory" and "obligatory" and work out how you haven't just uttered a contradiction. Presumably you are just using poetic and inaccurate language to say that our obligations are more than we assumed. What is your definition of "supererogatory"? Is a supererogatory act something that goes beyond obligation, or is it merely an act that is uncommonly arduous?
Quoting fdrake
1. We are obliged to solve the recycling problem
2. If everyone "does their bit" then the recycling problem will be solved
3. "Doing your bit" was never enough {Contradiction}
Your response is, "Supererogation is necessary to solve the recycling problem." The better response is that we underestimated what "doing your bit" entails. If (1) is true then (2) entails that we are obliged to "do our bit," and that if X bit is insufficient to make (2) true then we are obliged to do more than X. As far as I'm concerned, (3) is an equivocation which assumes that "doing your bit" is some contribution less than "your bit."
Unless you're just saying that the many are lazy and therefore the few have to pick up the slack, but that seems like a different argument.
I believe I do, thanks for clarifying.
Under what conditions would you say someone is really compelled to do something vs if they merely feel compelled to do so something?
Allow me to reframe it. Your monstrosity depends on the relation between volition and compulsion. Here is Aristotle:
Quoting Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, III.1
No monstrosity is occurring in an act with this sort of "mixed nature." Thus even certain forms of true compulsion are not involuntary. You haven't given a clear definition of what you mean by "monstrosity," but presumably it has to do with the kind of compulsion and constraint that makes an act involuntary.
Or put it this way: if you are the only man on Earth and you ran into Aron Lee Ralston's conundrum, you might be tempted to say that cutting off your arm is supererogatory (and therefore not obligatory), but I would be hard pressed to understand why it has anything at all to do with obligation. I would be hard pressed to tell you in what this obligation consists. (Let's also suppose you're an atheist.)
Edit: I think a big part of the issue is this question: How is a properly supererogatory act motivated? Can someone self-consciously engage in a supererogatory act, or will every heroic act be self-consciously viewed as obligatory?
I used to live with a Fransiscan nun who did lots of outreach work. I'm thus quite fond of Fransiscans. I enjoyed their commitment to the inherent beauty and moral value of nature, though we ended up having a lot of heated discussions regarding whether brutal tragedies, like miscarriages, should be seen as other parts of God's artwork. I was of the impression that all of creation meant all of it, the nun agreed. Neither of us could quite stomach loving the majesty of suffering and indifference. The damnedest thing we spoke about was that it was ultimately our senses of compassion and espirit de corps with humanity that stopped both of us from also loving pain.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes this is definitely a site of ambiguity {and perhaps weakness} in my account. When I've been referring to supererogatory acts, I've been wondering if I should've come up with another construct like "acts that would be considered supererogatory if they were not coerced or compelled in any sense". I kept referring to them as supererogatory to play with the question I just asked you regarding that distinguishes an act which one feels compelled to do and an act which one is really compelled to do. It is a hard question, as it seems you agree?
Another aspect of the ambiguity, which I would like to elevate to a "clusterfuck" is this: I think the requirement that one does supererogatory acts, given one's stated duties, is perhaps of a different sort to the requirements of duties. It concerns what should be expected given that one has stated duties. Here are two examples.
I have an obligation to take care of my flat, and part of that obligation involves cleaning. That would seem to suggest that the obligation to take care of my flat imbues me with an obligation to clean my flat, because cleaning my flat is part of the obligation of taking care of it.
However, I just cleaned my flat. It was obligate in the above sense. I used two antibacterial wipes to clean my kitchen counter. Using two antibacterial wipes was part of my cleaning of the flat. I should then perhaps conclude {on the same basis as the previous paragraph} that I was obliged to use two antibacterial wipes to clean my kitchen counter. Which means using three would've been a dereliction of duty. Which is absurd. What this shows is that obligation doesn't distribute over some types of entailment. So that if we had "I am obliged to do X, and X entails Y, then I am obliged to do Y", it would fail as a syllogism as there are counterexamples. This is relevant because Y could be a supererogation, and you could not derive a contradiction from X entails Y and one-ought-X due to the failure of the syllogism.
Which is the situation I am construing us as being in. We have obligations, those obligations entail supererogatory acts, but nevertheless we are not obliged to do them. Even though we are required to do them to fulfil our obligations in some sense. Which is why I've been referring to the spirit of our obligations rather than their letter. "Doing one's bit" is the letter of our obligations, playing by the rules and doing what counts as enough. Even if it turns out to be logically required to do something which is not obligate to do your duties successfully. So if one believes one ought to do something about climate change, "your bit" is recycling, but everyone knows it's not enough.
Nevertheless I want to insist that you really have succeeded in your duties if you do your bit. It's just that succeeding in your duties doesn't correspond to your duties fulfilling their intended function or purpose. Like addressing the existential threat climate change poses to human civilisation on the basis of putting the sardine tin in the green bin.
Very cool. Individual Franciscans are hit or miss for me, but I do appreciate their overall ethos and I have met some remarkable individuals.
Quoting fdrake
I'm an orthodox Christian, and the orthodox answer is that the state which brings about tragedy flows out of the Fall. Christians have not traditionally accepted tragedy as part of God's (primary) plan, and that's why. It doesn't surprise me that Christians who throw out those doctrines run into these problems. The doctrines are there for a reason. You get the same thing in Catholic theology with limbo. Limbo is thrown out and then you end up with all sorts of intractable problems with the stark heaven/hell dichotomy. We forget that the doctrines were there for a reason, and cannot be thrown out indiscriminately.
Quoting fdrake
Yes, that would quell many of my critiques. "That would have been a heroic act if he had chosen it himself!"
Quoting fdrake
Well the simple answer is that self-compulsion is not possible, and that one cannot be compelled by something which is not an agent. Or more precisely, that the "mixed nature" of an act like jettisoning cargo does not count as involuntary. But at that point we're picking at your attempt to blur the line between being compelled by an agent and being compelled by a circumstance.
To be blunt, I don't see how injustice (or monstrosity) can arise via compulsion unless there is an actual agent doing the compelling. One might feelor becompelled to jettison cargo, and they can feel frustrated about that, but I don't see anything unjust or monstrous about this. If you bring in the idea of gods or demons and say that Poseidon is a monster for compelling you to jettison cargo, then all of the logic is restored (and I wonder if this sense of "monstrosity" is a hangover from that view of gods). I'm not really opposed to that view of gods or angels/demons, so this isn't a full-scale criticism of that sense of monstrosity, but it is a criticism of the idea that one can be unjustly or monstrously compelled when no other agent is involved.
The more mundane question here is whether it is rational to get angry at a circumstance which is no one's fault. It's not an uninteresting question given that we do get angry in that manner quite often.
Quoting fdrake
I would say that:
1. If
1a. You are obliged to clean your flat, and
1b. Cleaning your flat entails cleaning the kitchen counter, and
1c. You decide to clean the counter with antibacterial wipes, and if 1c...
1d. ...Then two antibacterial wipes are required to clean the counter
-then-
2. You are obliged to use at least two antibacterial wipes when cleaning your kitchen counter
<(1a ? 1b ? 1c ? (1c ? 1d)) ? 2>
If we omitted the words "at least" from (2) then the conditional would be false, as there is no obligation to use exactly two wipes (unless we want to bring in another premise, say, about wasting wipes). That is, your claim that using three would be a dereliction of duty is false.
Quoting fdrake
I don't see that this is correct. If we let Y = 3 antibacterial wipes (which is supererogatory), then the entailment fails. It fails because at that point X no longer entails Y. Being obliged to do X does not oblige us to do Y.
Quoting fdrake
In what sense is one required to use three antibacterial wipes in order to clean the kitchen counter?
Quoting fdrake
As I said previously, if recycling is not enough then one who has recycled has not yet done their bit, at least if the joint "bits" are supposed to be sufficient.
Quoting fdrake
Again, I would describe this as naïveté about what is required, or sufficient, or obligatory. If someone believes that putting the sardine tin in the green bin is sufficient to address climate change, then they believe a false proposition.
Earlier I said:
Quoting Leontiskos
Even though that's not a very poetic or interesting way to phrase it, it's basically how I see the issue. If we view humans as social and hierarchical creatures rather than as atomic individuals, then the human community will require disproportionate sacrifice from the few in order that the whole community may thrive. This disproportionate sacrifice is arguably supererogatory (on a democratic-individualistic paradigm), and it is also a hypothetical imperative unto the end of communal flourishing (or in some cases, communal survival). But on an ancient paradigm the disproportionate work is not a burden, for the model of excellence was the heavenly spheres, which are constantly "working," and on which everything else depends to the utmost, but yet which have the most excellent and beautiful job of all.
Historically that is also how the saint or prophet would tend to view themselves (excepting the many saints who are too humble to think too long on themselves). It's not that they have a monstrous, burdensome, supererogatory job.* Rather, it's that they have been blessed to sit at the head of the table, near the Host, and that "the greatest is the servant of all." They imitate the Host who is kenotically pouring Himself out ceaselesslywho moves "the sun and the other stars." Besides, your point still finds a home in the idea that, "To whom much has been given, much will be demanded" (Luke 12:48).
This is why lots of Christians find the liberal-democratic paradigm rotten at its core, for it cannot but help view disproportionate service as tyrannical or monstrous.
* With certain exceptions such as Jeremiah or Jonah
I think this might be tackled in two ways:
First, yes there is a sense in which man must transcend his nature in order to become perfected. This means "going beyond" what we desire by nature. Far from being monstrous, one might see this as a reflection of the divine transcendence. I had written on this before re the question: "Did man have free will prior to the Fall?"
And this is right in line with the idea in Plato that all knowing and all of ethical life (even merely learning to act in accordance with basic norms) involves a sort of transcendence and ecstasis. When we strive to know something we do not already know we are going beyond what we already are, "going out to the world," and being joined to it in a union that changes us. Likewise, when we strive to know what is "truly good," as opposed to what merely appears to be good, we are moving beyond current desire, beyond the given of what we already are.
Hence, supererogation is simply what freedom and perfection requires.
However, there is a second solution, which is to say that acts of supererogation are, in fact, according to our nature. We are not, in the end, being forced to sacrifice by doing what is truly good. It only appears that way because we, in our fallen and confused state, prize temporary, mutable, worldly goods above spiritual, immutable goods.
Dante is paradigmatic here. In Canto XVIII of the Purgatorio, in the "discourses on love" that make up the heart of the entire Commedia, Dante asks Virgil to explain love, which is "the source of every virtue, every vice."
Love for the Good is natural. "The glory of Him, who moves all things, penetrates the universe, and glows in one region more, in another less," (Paradiso I) and we find our natural rest where the light is brightest, in that "Love that moves the sun and the other stars" (Paradiso XXXIII).
It is the result of a fallen and in some sense sick will and intellect (nous) that people prefer (and are so enslaved by) finite goods. Our true, natural happiness lies in what currently appears to us as supererogation. It only appears as supererogation to us because we are in some sense ill.
Hence, while Christ says that: "if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me," (Matthew 16:24), he also says: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30).
However, these two view often don't conflict. For most of the Patristics, and many Medievals, deified man, Christ the God-Man, is the ultimate natural type of man. Man is made for freedom and freedom, as the self-determining capacity to actualize the Good, is itself the ability of will and intellect to recognize lesser goods for what they are and to not only seek but to prefer (to love more fully) higher goods.
Hence, supererogation is neither monstrous (sub-natural) nor angelic (supernatural), but the original, natural state intended for God's image bearer. With that in mind, I think it's worth pointing out how virtue actually can be seen as allowing people to better weather the storms of fortune in a fallen world:
And I would argue the answer those questions is "no," it is not better for us to be constrained by fears, appetites, etc. To be truly more free, more self-determining, more able to transcend what we are, is good for us. Asking people to be free when they are slaves might indeed be monstrous, healing them that they might taste freedom is not.
Monstrosity comes into play in a society that sends out conflicting messages like:
-All goods are immanent worldly goods and reason demands a sort of "rational hedonism," but;
-The greatest people are martyrs to the cause of justice, and we should strive to be like them.
And we might add here both the modern focus on conflict and Manichean struggle, as well as the tendency to generally ignore moral education, spiritual disciplines, etc. in the public sphere. The combination here is analogous to demanding that a person with broken legs walk on their broken legs without first attempting to heal them. Physical therapy might be painful, but it is far different from simply yelling "walk!"
If one feels compelled to do something because it is good/just, but does not want to do so, this would be a state of continence in Aristotle's typology (whereas a state of virtue is where we enjoy and prefer the good). A difficulty in human life is that it is often painful and hard work to move from a state of vice or incontinence to a state of virtue (hence fortitude as a cardinal virtue). However, does this mean we should never attempt to compel people towards such changes?
If one agrees with the proposition that we might be educated in virtue and vice, in "good or bad loves," then it seems that a major (if not the major) goal of education will be to try to support this sort of education. But this will be a sort of "compulsion" to the extent that we are more or less inclined to "bad loves" above "good loves."
The illness/healing motif is very common in the Patristics on this topic. Healing, setting a bone, chemotherapy, etc. are often very unpleasant. Quitting smoking, or drinking, can likewise be excruciating, but loved ones might very well try to compel someone to do these things, ultimately for their own benefit. The goal, greater happiness and freedom, would seem to justify such treatments. After all, the goal of ascetic discipline (the word being derived from the training exercises of athletes) is not to abrogate the passions and appetites, but actually to see them most fulfilled, something that can only happen when the soul and its loves are properly ordered to the Good, True, and Beautiful.
I think you mean "deification," not "supererogation." They seem quite different.
Twice now in this thread I've wondered if I simply don't understand the word "supererogation" and reached for the dictionary:
Quoting Supererogation | Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Quoting Supererogation | Cambridge Dictionary
I have never heard the nature/grace debate couched in terms of supererogation or duty/obligation. You could fanagle the term into that debate via the route of "necessity," but that whole paradigm seems largely foreign to the issue. It is foreign in large part because, "When you have done all that is commanded you, say, We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty" (Luke 17:10).
My point would be that what appears as supererogation from the frame of history/man, and thus monstrous to compel, need not appear so from a corrected perspective.
To "take up one's cross," and "be crucified with Christ," are beyond the duties fallen man recognizes for man, for instance.
That's fair, but I am not convinced that arduous acts like "taking up one's cross" are compelled, unless we are talking about Christians:
Quoting Leontiskos
So I want to say that "to take up one's cross" is also beyond the duties that Christians recognize for non-Christians.
In general, to coerce or compel a non-duty is to require someone to do what they are not required to do, and this is unjust. Compelled supererogation is but one instance of this.
Right, I'd say the culpability and responsibility are a function of knowledge and strength of will, but these are also things we have control over (and indeed can gain more control over with effort and assistance). As respects volitional acts, those who choose the worse over the better do so either out of ignorance about what is truly best or else suffer from weakness of will.
Progress in the attainment of virtue and knowledge carries with it culpability and duty. As respects taking on duty, there is an important element of reflexive, positive freedom here. One is not "free to become..." a good doctor, teacher, father, etc. without the capacity to understand and live up to the duties imposed by those roles.
Growth in knowledge and virtue is growth towards freedom [I]and[/I] responsibility, since both ignorance and vice are limitations on freedom (as St. Augustine says, even a king, if he is wicked, is a slave to as many masters as he has vices). What lies "beyond the call of current duty" for the person in the early stages of the pilgrimage towards virtue lies within the scope of their obligations as they progress.
This is also why the most grievous sins are those committed by people who well "know better" and those in which the intellect, the most divine part of man, is twisted in the pursuit evil.
I would think this is incumbent on all people though. Socrates' duties to his own principles, to the Good, stand despite his not having had access to revelation.
As St. Paul says:
[I]18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things [/I] - Romans 1
And:
[I] 14 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:
15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;) [/I] - Romans 2
Culpability may increase with knowledge but there is also a sort of negligence the ignorant may be found guilty of as well.
And, to 's point, one could see this as applying in the historical frame to mankind and human history as well.
They're stuck in my head as Christian hippies. But an attempt to live by a moral code, like they do, makes me respect them more than I would a hippie stereotype.
Quoting Leontiskos
I see that. I enjoyed her willingness to dive into the questions and sustain her belief despite the pain of aporias. From what I gathered she and hers were quite fond of Kierkegaard. The students that the Fransiscan group drew in had Christian flavoured Wittgenstein epistemology too {make everything difficult a hinge proposition}. Lots of existentialist stuff in there.
Though I doubt you or @Count Timothy von Icarus would enjoy the degree the above allowed postmodernism ingress into their concept of Christianity. Not that they saw it like that.
Quoting Leontiskos
It would've made it a less interesting thread if I went with that.
Quoting Leontiskos
Involvement is quite a different concept from direct cause though right? It's clear cut that if someone has a gun to your head and tells you to do a thing, they're coercing you. If someone writes a law that makes your current behaviour prohibited on pain of jail time, whose responsibility are those consequences on you? Could say it's the enforcers, the lawmakers etc. At that point I think it makes sense to see the broader system that produced the law as a system of compulsion. Though at a certain point that system does need to have real teeth - police officers, bailiffs. They "just" enforce laws and contracts though.
I think that the operative issue is whether it only makes sense to think of culpability in terms of what a specific human agent proximately causes, or whether agency is better diffused into a broader concept like an institution [hide=*]{I'm sure there are other alternatives}[/hide]. Broadly speaking, this seems like an issue of collective vs individual responsibility. Again I'll appeal to business as usual and say we've got loads of mechanisms of collective culpability in the everyday - legal persons, like Reddit can be responsible for something. A university is responsible for its admissions process, not any particular person in it. If it makes sense to ascribe responsibility to an institution without ascribing responsibility to any of its human agents in particular, we're left with a choice of saying either institutions are agents or non-agents can be responsible or both.
I think I've embraced "both" in my prior posts.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't think this works. The reason being that there are loads of substitutable acts for the bacterial wipes. I could've used a cloth and spray, a cloth and a different spray, one wipe {it was a small area}, a dish scrubber. A wet sock would've worked. If you assume X is obligate entails X-parts are obligate, the X-parts are really particular in a way X as a whole tends not to be, so you end up requiring absurdities.
Quoting Leontiskos
One is not. My point was broader. I've got in mind something like the following:
1 ) People ought recycle.
2 ) Recycling is done to reduce climate impact.
3 ) Recycling isn't sufficient to reduce climate impact meaningfully.
4 ) Reducing climate impact meaningfully requires supererogatory acts, like high commitment activism.
If 1's true, and it's done on the basis of 2, then it fails "in spirit" due to 3, and it only works "in spirit" if you do something else.
The thing regarding parts is to block a modification of the above. One could reason as follows. People ought recycle, this derives from the obligation to reduce climate impact, reducing climate impact requires activism, therefore activism is obligate, what is obligate is not supererogatory, therefore activism isn't supererogatory. The parthood thing blocks going from "reducing climate impact requires actvism" to "activism is obligate".
My use of it is just to sustain the aporia, from what would be a good angle of attack.
My attitude toward us and our duties is that, by and large, we fulfil our duties. And I think to @Count Timothy von Icarus' point, our duties as we tend to circumscribe them are our duties. I think that most people are decent and have a good moral conscience, and follow most of their duties. Most people don't steal, cheat, harm others needlessly. Most people keep their promises and do their best to honour duties of care. I want to insist that by and large those duties are fulfilled. I just also want to insist that the broader purpose of those duties - their spirit, what they're done for, the kind of world following them is supposed to engender - is not fulfilled without going above and beyond them. That here is an inherent failure in the aggregate of just doing one's duties, that kind of conduct alone cannot bring about the world those duties are imagined to play a part in.
I think your response to this, and the Count's, is that this inherent failure coincides with an aspect of humanity's fall. That, in some sense, we're supposed to be better than this. I'd agree with that. But I think that supposed is holding ourselves to our better natures, principally in our imagination. We make ourselves aim for something better, even if we always fail in doing so. And that's good.
It's also a fundamentally optimistic gloss on he situation. It holds out a potential for humanity to be better based on better education toward virtue, or at least absolution for our perpetual failure to be better. I'm sufficiently cynical to believe that the optimistic gloss above is a less a means of aspiring to our higher natures, and more a means of telling ourselves that we are already acting in accordance with them and the world they imagine. That is perhaps by the by.
What I am certain of, however, is that the inherency of our failure to live up to the aspirations of our nature, and the necessity of absolving ourselves of that failure, are duties and norms working as normal. If you do your bit, you need not do more by definition - that's the connection between supererogation and duty, and what gives the prior argument you made @Leontiskos its refutational force. That to go above and beyond is, indeed, not expected on the basis of duty. And it cannot be, as to insist to go above duty is duty is a contradiction in terms
That failure, our perpetual inability to act in accordance with our better natures, and our ranging ability to absolve ourselves of responsibility for this, far from being an awfulness which can be excised from humanity is our essential condition. That our good conscience is inescapably not fit for the purposes it imagines itself to have.
Yes, I agree. :grin:
Quoting fdrake
Thats fine, but I see it as secondary. Either God aligns with the world as it now exists or he doesnt. If someone thinks that God aligns with the world as it now exists (and the world has not fallen away from God in any real way), then they effectively believe in a different God than the orthodox Christian. To try to solve that discrepancy with existentialism looks to be a band-aid on a mortal wound. In fact the same basic issue underlies different forms of existentialism. By my lights to be reading Kierkegaard is to already be reading someone who presupposes a fallen condition.
Quoting fdrake
Sure, and many realities represent a confluence of agents, such as law.
Quoting fdrake
If youre only saying that some forms of agency are diffuse and collective, then I have no problem with that. The OP struck me as going farther than that, and claiming that there is monstrosity apart from the acts/creations/effects of agents.
And again, although its not something I tend to broach on TPF, I believe in angelic and demonic powers, and therefore there is room in my thought for very broad and diffuse forms of agency. Indeed, the reason an OP like this is somewhat intuitive is because those broad and diffuse forms of agency are intuitive. But I dont think the claims will make much sense apart from that religious context. Prima facie, there are monstrosities that are not due to human agency. But I think its a dead end to hold this while eschewing non-human agents. Prometheus has no one to rail against if there is no Zeus, in which case there simply is no catharsis in identifying a supposed monstrosity.
Quoting fdrake
Id say youre missing 1c, which is an explicit conjunct in the antecedent. All youre saying is that if 1c is not present then 2 does not follow, and my reasoning explicitly agrees with this.
Quoting fdrake
There is an equivocal term between (2) and (3), and once that is removed your (contradictory) supererogatory obligation dissolves. Namely, you added the word meaningfully in (3). Remove the equivocation by adding that adverb to (2) or removing it from (3) and the contradiction dissolves.
Quoting fdrake
I dont see how the parts are going to help you get to the conclusion that supererogation is obligatory (or required). Suppose there is an obligatory end and multiple independently sufficient means [hide="*"]or sets of means[/hide] to that end. Obligation then applies to the means qua end. One is not obliged to utilize any given means, but one is obliged to utilize some means or combination of means that is sufficient to achieve the obligatory end.
Your conclusion (4) is simply invalid. If we fixed the equivocation by adding meaningfully to (2), then what follows is not (4), but rather the conclusion that recycling is insufficient to fulfill the obligatory end associated with (1). Ergo: we are obliged to do more than recycle (or we ought to do more than recycle).
---
Quoting fdrake
I think youre contradicting yourself. If the obligatory end is not fulfilled by the duties we are fulfilling, then we are not fulfilling all our duties. We are not fulfilling our duties. Is the daughters duty to remove the stains or merely to wash the clothes? Youre basically saying, She fulfilled all her duties by washing the clothes, even though the clothes are still stained. If her duty was to wash the clothes but her duty did not extend to getting the clothes clean, then what you say makes sense. But it doesnt make sense to construe her duty that way.
Quoting fdrake
I agree: If you dont do more than you believe to be necessary, then you will not succeed. This strikes me as a matter of correcting a mistaken level of effort, not a matter of supererogation. In fact if someone exerts a level of effort that is insufficient to achieve their goals or duties, then they are being negligent and are failing to act in such a way to achieve their goals or fulfill their duties.
Quoting fdrake
Indeed, and when we add to this the idea that we are obliged to undertake means which fulfill our obligatory ends, your notion that the truly sufficient means are supererogatory is undone.
Quoting fdrake
I think the fact that we fail to fulfill our means-obligations proves that either we are fallen or else our notions of morality and duty are fundamentally confused. To my mind this essentially proves our need for salvation.
But lets suppose that unregenerate man fails to fulfill his means-obligations. What then? Will telling him that he must do the supererogatory fix the situation? I dont see how it would. If he isnt fulfilling his means-obligations its not clear why he would fulfill his means-supererogations.
I would say that for the non-religious, or for those who believe that this state is our inevitable and perpetual condition, the only option is some form of resignation (to failure). To reuse the recycling analogy, this would be resigning oneself to fail to correct climate impact. You can still recycle, but only with the knowledge that you will not succeedwith the knowledge that you are only delaying the inevitable. And one can play Camus all they like, but that burns out fast enough.
At the end of the day we must ask for help. We know we cant do it on our own. The crucial question then becomes: where to turn for help? There are many options.
Powerful argument.
I know a number of secular types who like to quote the elderly Pablo Casals who once said of all the world's problems - "The situation is hopeless, we must take the next step." I noticed the Green's using this quote recently to describe your scenario.
Quoting Leontiskos
Can you say some more about this?
Yes, that's basically it. And I think you end up with a critique similar to Chesterton's critique of the slogan, "You just have to grin and bear it."
Quoting Tom Storm
It could go in a lot of directions, which is why I left it vague. The two basic options seem to be either hope or desperation, and they lead down very different roads. The darker road justifies the unjustifiable on account of being "in extremis." Making supererogation obligatory seems like a minor case of that.
A Christian writer like Tolkien incorporates "eucatastrophe." For example, in The Hobbit during the battle of the five armies the hopeless situation is spun on its head with the unanticipated arrival of the Eagles (the servants of Manwe). That is an example of a characteristically Christian hope or possibility. You fight with no understanding of how you could win, and yet with the knowledge that the unexpected is possible. And you do not act out of a rationalizing desperation.
Quoting Leontiskos
I am saying that. Though I imagine it can appear that I am saying something different since I see the flavour of agency that institutions and ideologies have as principally inhuman. And at a push I'd commit to human agency being kind of inhuman at its root. That's by the by though.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes. I assumed you were using the obligation of X into obligation of parts of X inference in a prior post. I then attacked the inference as if it were yours. I am making no use of the inference in my arguments. The failure of the inference is part of what leaves me the room to say that some obligations require supererogations, with the requirement being a logical one. The issue is part of the OP, but me writing about it like I have is because I believed you were using the inference against the OP, and I was attacking the inference without using the principle it embodies. I care that supererogatory acts aren't obligatory, I don't want to collapse any supererogations into obligations. That our obligations can require us going above and beyond our obligations in some sense is one of my central theses. That particular sense being {achieving the spirit of our duties or bringing about the kind of world living our obligations aims to bring about or the intended outcome of following our duties to begin with}}.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes. "Meaningfully" was supposed to convey connection between our duties and why we follow them to begin with - that sense I spoke about in the final sentences of my prior paragraph in this post. If I was talking about fulfilling our duties and how that means we haven't fulfilled out duties, that would be a contradiction - and it's not the tension I care about in this thread. The @Count Timothy von Icarus leveraged this to form a counterargument of sorts, by inflating our obligations above and beyond my rather quotidian portrayal of them, our collective failures then become true "moral failings" of our duties, rather than some failure inherent in our moral conscience and the satisfaction of our duties to begin with. The latter is what I'm advocating. That we really do fulfil our duties, that they are quotidian in comparison to why we follow them, why we follow them casts a shadow on our conduct that renders our duties insufficient. Nevertheless we "do our bit", and it isn't enough.
That we "do our bit", and it isn't enough, I then interpret as a sense of monstrosity inherent in the "state of things", in our institutions and forms of life. The specific form of monstrosity is that what could be enough are acts of supererogation, the laudable but non-obligate. Even then they are no guarantee. The monstrosity that makes running food banks required to feed people despite massive food surpluses is one that those food banks volunteers' face, if they stop going above and beyond people go hungry. They're thus "expected" to in a manner that goes beyond their duties, and life presents them a threat in the form of a modus tollens impact, if you don't do this then that will not happen. Stop going to work for free and the poor starve.
That's the same threat we face whenever the letter of our duties does not also fulfil their spirit.
I hope this is clearer now.
Yes. Telling people that they must do more to do enough, when we already can't do enough, doesn't work.
Quoting Leontiskos
Answers to the problem aren't really about what to do, I think, they're about how to cope with our condition of being unable to do "enough". One way of dealing with that is to try to do enough. Or to try to bring about a state of things were people can do enough. Like @Count Timothy von Icarus engender.
That said, I think there are other options of how to feel than resignation, absurdity and faith - one could learn to love the taste of the brick wall. I think that goes against our natures more than what we've been talking about in this thread, though.
Existentialism looks like it provides an answer. I'm going to use this as an opportunity to rant about it. The number of people I see adopt an "existentialist" posture in person is quite high, but it does nothing to stop everyday petty grievances and tragedies from hurting them, and it doesn't allow them to enjoy the pain of it. I see an appeal to absurd as a metacognitive trap, it's how you think you think, but you only think that because you're not looking at how you think. It's also metaphysical stopgap, a refusal to inquire or do more. It's a refusal to be troubled by the troubling. Though doubtless there are more sincere engagements with it than the one I see often.
I will spare you my comments about faith in this context. But they resemble my comment below about extreme leftism, which I see as a secular form of faith.
I agree with you that a secular "answer" to the problem is quite difficult. The people I'm aware of who are troubled by these problems are generally socialists or communists, and treat The Revolution in eschatological terms. It will be Kingdom come, but of our own making. The faith they have in a future end-state with no means of imagining how to bring it about. They don't have the option of absolving themselves of all responsibility - all acts of going above and beyond - for bringing it about though. I think they're aware of how fucked things are {our fallenness} and stop thinking about it. It all dissolves into the question "What is to be done?". Though I think they real answer to that question is "What is to be done, that goes above and beyond, that I can actually do without an incredible amount of self sacrifice?". Which I have a lot of respect for. The amount of going above and beyond required from everyone for things to be markedly better may be pretty small indeed, and I can respect the gamble.
CS Lewis {for which I will retag @Count Timothy von Icarus due to his stanning for the man} has excellent commentary on this in The Screwtape Letters. For those of you which have not read it, this is a series of funny and disturbing essays, written from the perspective of the middle manager devil Screwtape mentoring his enthusiastic but hapless younger sibling Wormwood in the art of tempting mortals to sin. Throughout they fight "The Enemy" - God - principally through perversions of human faith and duty. The ideal state of the sinner in the book is someone who behaves without virtue who believes themselves either righteous or able to absolve themselves of their evil while continuing it.
Lewis' antidote to this was to really give your all in the present and consign the outcomes to the will of God - for posterity and luck to judge, in secular terms. This is a form of living in the present. Notably Lewis sees our duties tomorrow as "acts of justice and charity", which are duties in the expanded sense @Count Timothy von Icarus was talking about. I think whether you read the above similarly to any self help book, or a means for bettering the world, depends upon the scope of duties and what you believe people following their duties successfully look like. From my relatively quotidian perspective on duty, in which people tend to satisfy them in our day to day lives, the above reads like any self help book extolling the virtues of living in the moment. If you instead read Wormwood's target of temptation heroically, that they will indeed plan tomorrows acts of justice and charity and simply pray for grace in their execution and outcome, the issue disappears. But the bar for good human conduct raises to a level that it becomes practically unattainable. At which point, in my view, it beggars belief that we could refer to any human as good accurately. And I do see us as referring to ourselves as good accurately, so what is good must be more quotidian than the world transforming eternal present of Lewis', or @Count Timothy von Icarus's, moral hero.
The latter moral hero functioning as someone to aspire to, or as the regulative ideal of our moral imagination? I can agree with that. But then we circle the inherency of failure again, and of the impossibility to fulfil that ideal, despite being required to do so by the state of things.
Metaphysical optimism, the idea that we must live "in the best of all possible worlds," is, as far as I can tell, a concern that largely arises during the Reformation. I think David Bentley Hart's book on the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami is a quite good response to this. He uses Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov (and particularly the short story the Grand Inquisitor that is nested inside it) to address this issue.
It will suffice to say that the position of "metaphysical optimism," so well lampooned in Voltaire's Candide, does not share much in common with the idea of a corrupt and fallen cosmos that has been degenerated by man's free choice to sin and which is ruled over by freely rebellious archons and principalities. This is a world where St. John can say that Satan is the "prince of this world," (John 12:31) and that "the entire cosmos is under the control of the Evil One" (I John 5.19), or where the messenger of the Lord is delayed by a corrupt dominion in Daniel, etc.
Hart says:
A key distinction then is that what "God wills" and what "God permits" are not identical.
I don't see how metaphysical optimism is relevant. I wasn't trying to say that we live in the best of all possible worlds with that offhand remark, I was trying to say that if we have a duty to adore all of creation, that extends to things we are horrified by. If we don't have that duty then it's a non-issue.
It would then seem that the Christ in your quote doesn't adore all of creation, and if how he acts becomes duty, there's no paradox.
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- I have not, but thanks for the reference. :up:
First, I'll throw out a proposal: the general issue of "how do norms and duties evolve?" and "is there progress in this dimension?" (and "if there is 'progress' how is it achieved?") are more properly questions for the philosophy of history. Much "moral progress" is not the work of heroic individuals qua individuals, but of institutions, which serve to shape individual identity and action, and which give context and shape individual acts of heroism.
Of relevance, M.C. Lemon's introduction to his survey of the philosophy of history has some pointed questions for the skeptic of speculative history:
I would just add that the person who denies progress tout court has the additional difficult of explaining why, presumably, they still think that a biology text book from 2025 is likely to be more correct than one from 1925, and the one from 1925 more accurate than the one from 1825. It seems that one must either deny scientific and technological progress, which seems absurd, or offer some explanation for why it is unique in terms of "progress" as a whole.
I think the answer to "how does an ethics of individuals motivate social change?" is: "it doesn't." Or at least, "that shouldn't be its focus." Individuals are no doubt important in the gyre of history, but the degree of influence they wield is almost always largely a function of the larger structures they play a role in. It's a historically situated and contingent influence. To be sure, some individuals qua individuals are important as exemplars, as say Socrates or St. Francis are, but their ability to be exemplars is contingent on certain institutions existing and persisting as well (else historical memory of them would simply be lost. Most saints are forgotten).
Anyhow, I think the classical perspective Lewis draws on so much would have it that what is truly best [I]for us[/I] is the perfection of virtue and freedom (the former being necessary for the latter). This obviously is a process that can be aided or hindered by our environment, by our economic, cultural, and historical context.
Hence, I think the question is a difficult one. How does the individual act as part of the gyre of history? If we can answer the questions:
Is there progress? And;
If there is, how does it occur?
We will have a better idea about how to relate to the demand to go beyond current cultural, historical, and economic conditions, and how monstrous this must be. I would say that we do indeed have a corporate duty to transcend these factors, but the prudent and wise way to do so is a difficult question.
So, perhaps one way of dealing with monstrosity is to look to higher levels of organization. For example, it is one thing for one man in a standoff to disarm, a heroic sacrifice, another for all involved to drop their weapons (perhaps of obvious benefit to all).
I
I'm glad we agree on this.
Quoting fdrake
Okay, but it seems like these fold right back into the problem of what to do.
Quoting fdrake
Yes, I can definitely see that.
Quoting fdrake
I agree, but I also think that more moderate issues have a tendency to become a secular proxy for religion, such as climate concerns, civil rights concerns, etc.
Quoting fdrake
Right: nothing apart from bringing about the Revolution.
Quoting fdrake
Yes, that was a highly appropriate quote from Lewis. It is a better way of illustrating my point above about . But I think it also goes back to the issue of . Lewis admires the man who does his work but then, "washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment."
Elsewhere Lewis writes on the importance of putting first things first and second things second; and that idolatry occurs when second things are put first. This mixes in well with . An entailment of Przywara's project is that when the transcendent God is removed from the picture, everything falls out of proportion (and this is a bit like the way that the Sun orders the solar system). How, for example, is the secular to apply proportion and moderation to their concern for recycling? Is it at all strange that extreme leftism looks like fundamentalist religion? When we move away from the rural setting and into the ideational setting of the city-dweller, how are proportion and moderation to be brought to the issues that the extreme leftist champions? I'm not sure that the secular can ultimately contextualize issues at all, given the way that the "moral imagination" is so variable and malleable.
Quoting fdrake
Charity is a duty for the Christian.
("That's not to say that what is obligatory for a Christian is the same as what is obligatory for a non-Christian" - .)
Quoting fdrake
For Lewis? Why?
Quoting fdrake
But it seems you are now back to the idea that good = attainable = insufficient = non-transformative. "We are all good even though we will ultimately fail to do what must be done."
I mean, people like to say they're good. They like to say that everyone does their duty. Especially in a democracy. Because then everyone can pat each other on the back and feel good about themselves, despite the fact that the ship is clearly going down. I admit it's all rather bewildering once you catch a glimpse of what is actually going on, but it really does seem to be going on.
Quoting fdrake
It must eventually be brought up that Screwtape is not equally concerned with Christians and non-Christians. If failure were inherent then Wormwood need not apply for the job, for the job is otiose. Failure is not inherent for Lewis. But Lewis would agree that if success is found by "pursuit of the rainbow's end," then failure is inherent. That is Screwtape's goal. Does Screwtape need to tempt the secular at all? Should he be concerned that the secular (social justice warrior) might not pursue the rainbow's end?
(Edit: The eschatological issue is definitely interesting. I had intended to speak to it more directly than I did... Time is not on my side, as I am trying to fit in a number of threads before I have to take off this evening...)
Hmm, okay...
Quoting fdrake
I'm still not getting a lot of traction on this stuff. I would say that if someone ignores the spirit of an obligation and clings to the letter of the obligation, then they are failing in their obligations. I don't think the spirit of an obligation can be a supererogation. It still feels like you are conflating obligation and supererogation.
Quoting fdrake
Can you say more explicitly what you mean by "the inference"? I tried to speak to the general issue with the paragraph beginning, "..."
Quoting fdrake
Creating a strong distinction between the letter and the spirit of an obligation feels much the same as creating a strong distinction between the duty and the reason for the duty. Just as I would say that merely fulfilling the letter is not fulfilling the obligation, so too I would say that performing a duty without understanding and involving the reason behind the duty is a failure in the duty. From what I can see, the "why" is not supererogatory.
Quoting fdrake
The concrete example is very much welcome.
Let's take a concrete example like this and do the following:
"If I do X, then Y occurs. Y cannot occur without X, and Y must occur."
Then we want to ask whether X is obligatory, supererogatory, arduous, heroic, unsustainable, etc. And whether Y is obligatory, supererogatory, necessary, etc.
If we were to take the food bank example then we would say that X =
The following inference:
Quoting Leontiskos
If I construe the spirit of an obligation as "engendering the kind of world that obligation seeks to create" and the obligation's letter as "the acts constitutive of its duty", maybe that makes it clearer. Satisfying the spirit of an obligation has something like a success criterion for fulfilling a purpose or higher cause, and a duty doesn't need such a purpose or a higher cause but often {typically} has them.
Some duties are relatively transparent in their spirit and letter. The letter of my duty to take out the trashing is... taking out the trash. The spirit is a bunch of things like "letting rubbish pile up in your house is negligent" {a vice}, "letting rubbish pile up in your house degrades the quality of your and your neighbours lives" {disrespect to community}, just general ethical principles. If one took out the trash and left it in the street, you've satisfied the letter of your duty of taking out the trash, but contradicted some of the tenets that act is supposed to embody. You definitely took out the trash, you were nevertheless not considerate to your neighbours.
A small item may escape your trash bag, it counts as litter, do you run after it when it blows away in the wind? Well if you don't you've littered, which is inconsiderate by the same principle, but at that point no one particularly cares, so no one would see it as violating the spirit of your duties if you didn't chase after it. One may be perversely or minimally compliant, one may also do minor violations of the spirit of ones duties and count as satisfying them.
The room opened up by perverse compliance and minor violations of a duty's spirit is also room for the failure of the aims of duty while satisfying its letter.
Imagine a world, then, in which one could not fulfil the aim of being considerate to one's neighbours without running after an escaped piece of trash in a gale. That's a tyrannical and absurd standard, no one can live chasing after every piece of trash like that - metaphorically and literally. Nevertheless, the world demands you relate to yourself and others as such a tyrant in order to fulfil your duties about the things which matter in spirit and not just in letter.
Why?
Quoting Leontiskos
I understand something as supererogatory if it is laudable but not required for one's duties, like chasing after the trash in a gale. Laudability arises from embodying the spirit of one's duties to a high degree, heights of considerateness and self sacrifice.
The food bank example I think is a good one. I want to take it as given that no one is duty bound to work full time for free in a food bank, it isn't a moral requirement for anyone to do that, but some people take up the burden. What would happen if some people did not take up the burden? The poor would starve. Working as a volunteer full time in a food bank is laudable. Thus, working as a volunteer full time in a food bank is supererogatory, as it's laudable and goes above and beyond one's duties of care for humanity.
But let's have a look at what happens if no one takes up the burden - which is, no one does something which is always permissible not to do -, the poor then starve. Some people working at the foodbank in that manner is necessary for the poor not to starve - necessary as a logical requirement, the poor would starve without it. But it was also shown not to be a moral duty to work full time there as a volunteer.
The aporia arises because if some people did not compel themselves to go above and beyond their duties, the poor would starve. The state of things thus requires {logically} that people go above and beyond their duties to ensure that widely held requirements for a just society. That is a much greater imposition than occasionally chasing after trash in a strong wind. That's the monstrosity I'm speaking about.
That is a good angle of approach. As I reflect on your post, the first thing that comes to mind is that the whole neo-religious and systematic framing of Comte's sociology seems mistaken. The sociological lens is unhelpful when it is given primacy over all else. It leads naturally to dehumanization and despair. Here I think of Mother Teresa's quip about loving the poor rather than merely fighting poverty. The "fight against poverty" reifies and depersonalizes the issue.
But beyond that and regarding @fdrake's "monstrosity," I think subsidiarity is the most necessary political doctrine at the moment. People think they should solve worldwide hunger because they confuse themselves for God. The better thing to do is to address hunger in your own neighborhood and let the other neighborhoods address their own problems. The "moral imagination" is often tripping over itself by "making the best the enemy of the good." If it were not so busy fretting over world hunger, it would have already had a real impact on local hunger. And in fighting local hunger one learns grassroots strategies which achieve more than mere symptom-relief. Indeed the whole concept of "solving a problem" via interventionism may be a non-starter.
Earlier I critiqued the "moral imagination" for failing to understand the importance of stability and conservatismfor failing to avoid the French Revolution. More generally, the problem lies in salivating over "the final solution," and this goes back to Mother Teresa's quote. The problem lies in becoming so fixated on solving the problem once and for all, that one fails to see progress short of a solution, and one fails to see contextualizing and countervailing forces. In particular, one fails to see the finitude of means. There is a failure to see, for example, that if all resources are marshaled in favor of Green Energy, then severely detrimental effects will occur as a result of this misappropriation of resources. It is said that the demons characteristically destroy humans by giving them true knowledge at the wrong time.
In some sense, to draw the dilemma between evil and monstrosity is to have already justified monstrosity. Maybe the monstrosity does not exist after all, if the problem of starvation is not up to one man, or is not to be solved in one year. Even heroic acts will not solve such problems quickly, and one could easily destroy themselves with burnout, thus creating a counterfactually inferior contribution to the problem. Many of our problems are much bigger and older than we are, and it is therefore unrealistic to map them on the small scales of decades or of individuals.
This post is rather unfocused, but in general I think we need to be realistic about the proportion between the contributions of finite agents to large problems. Second, I think we need to distinguish between self-created problems and pre-existing problems. Self-created problems such as recycling or vice have more cause for despair than pre-existing problems where progress has occurred over time, such as hunger.
Okay, but do we have to distinguish between a duty and a hypothetical imperative? Not every goal of betterment implicates duty.
Quoting fdrake
Let me quote the earlier point I referred to:
Quoting Leontiskos
So on my view an obligatory means always presupposes an obligatory end. When you want to create a strong distinction between the duty-act and the reason for the duty-act, such that the first is obligatory and the second bears on supererogation, I think you have inappropriately sundered the means from the end, and thus sundered the wholeness and rationale of the duty. Granted, your letter/spirit distinction is a little bit different than your act/reason distinction, but I think the wholeness of means-end is very similar to the wholeness of letter-spirit. Sundering this wholeness results in incorrect reasoning.
Quoting fdrake
Agreed.
Quoting fdrake
You've here identified the reason why we are not obliged to do such a thing - why it does not fall within the duty.
Quoting fdrake
I think this is too loose. Perverse compliance != minor violations != non-violations (such as the gale carrying away a loose piece of trash). This seems to be your argument:
1. Someone can fulfill the letter of a duty without fulfilling the spirit of a duty
2. If the letter is fulfilled then the duty is fulfilled
3. Therefore, the duty can be fulfilled without its spirit being fulfilled
4. Therefore, the fulfilling of the spirit of the duty is supererogatory
I see the error coming in (2), which sunders the wholeness of the letter-spirit unity.
Quoting fdrake
I don't see how requiring someone to fulfill the spirit of their duty is tyrannical.
Quoting fdrake
Okay so:
Quoting Leontiskos
...you want to say that a supererogatory act is motivated by, "embodying the spirit of one's duties to a high degree," or basically by interpolating duty.
Quoting fdrake
Okay, good. What are some of the conflicting intuitions at play here, regarding X and Y (from above)?
I am more and more confident in the thesis that the issue is incorrect reasoning rather than a monstrosity (although we can always look at the phenomenology of the "monstrosity").
Engaging with modern views of morality almost always involves engaging modern notions of justice, and my conversation with Bob Ross was no exception. Ross was using "injustice" in a loose, and in my opinion inaccurate, sense. I think the same thing is happening here. Your premise is, "If someone starves, then an injustice has occurred." But what does that really mean? People and animals have been starving for a very long time, and it's hard to see what this has to do with injustice in any precise sense. Much of this thread strikes me as an issue of language being used poetically, and then arguments being drawn from that poetic usage. "Justice" seems to be a case in point. What do you really mean by that word, "justice"? Is it really unjust that someone should starve? Why?
To revisit the question of how a properly supererogatory act is motivated, I don't think it is as closely aligned to duty as you do. On my view the supererogatory has to do with what is better or what is ideal, and this is quite different from what is obligatory. This is why 's point about "the best of all possible worlds" is perhaps more pertinent than it first appears to be. The better and the best are not obligatory. And note how different solving starvation is from solving climate change. The former is an appeal to what is better or best, whereas the latter is more essentially an appeal to what is necessary qua survival.
I'll leave it there for now, even though I am doing little more than touching on further considerations.
I've run out of steam for now. Thanks for the excellent discussion.
Your post was interesting.
Indirectly related is how in Quentin Tarantino movies, he makes us see always a hierarchy of evil: there's the bad guy(s), often a gangster(s); but soon enough the Real Sicko(s) appear.
I know Im simplifying and paraphrasing but you refer to the human as being doomed to a condition of monstrosity (because we always faced with evil (choices)).
I think it is only in History (Mind) that we are potentially so doomed (conditioned). Because (though almost trite to say) History moves dialectically and difference requires varying degrees of evil and good: to move. I think as human animals, like all other creatures (and why should we be inherently different?), there is no good and evil, no difference. We just are.