• fdrake
    7.1k
    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:Leontiskos

    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.

    Is moral imagination bound up with supererogation? Or with obligation? Or perhaps neither? What is the end that moral imagination conceives?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.

    And what is a monstrosity after all? Is it anything more than a matter of constraining or compelling?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...

    I think you could see "duty" as the moral floor, below which we should not sink,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.
  • Pantagruel
    3.5k
    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.fdrake

    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?
  • Leontiskos
    4.7k
    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.fdrake

    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?

    What I have in mind with a moral imagination is, roughly, a psychological and social concept.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.

    I'm sure you can see the Christian theological undertones there, they are quite intentional. I trial ran this discussion with a priest.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:

    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.fdrake

    Okay, and I don't really agree with that, but I would distinguish "improvement." I would only agree with the claim <What is monstrous is any state of affairs that requires some people to act in a supererogatory fashion at some time in order to meet a mere obligation of improvement> (where the meeting of a mere obligation is not supererogatory). Some morally imagined improvements involve supererogation, some require mere obligation, and some require neither.

    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.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.

    existence compels us to a largely unachievable higher naturefdrake

    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:

    The wounded surgeon plies the steel
    That questions the distempered part;
    Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
    The sharp compassion of the healer's art
    Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

    Our only health is the disease
    If we obey the dying nurse
    Whose constant care is not to please
    But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
    And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

    The whole earth is our hospital
    Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
    Wherein, if we do well, we shall
    Die of the absolute paternal care
    That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

    The chill ascends from feet to knees,
    The fever sings in mental wires.
    If to be warmed, then I must freeze
    And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
    Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

    The dripping blood our only drink,
    The bloody flesh our only food:
    In spite of which we like to think
    That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
    Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
    T. S. Eliot's East Coker

    The "supererogation" takes on a very different form when one is a patient.
  • Fire Ologist
    1.3k
    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.fdrake

    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 don’t 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 Nazi’s, 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 one’s head forcing the box be put on the table, or a gun to one’s 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 haven’t 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 I’ll kill your family), is monstrous.

    But I disagree that an ideology can take the place of the person holding the gun to anyone’s 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 Nazi’s and their concentration camps couldn’t take away the only freedoms that matter. This is why Socrates willingly drank the hemlock.

    I'm sure you can see the Christian theological undertonesfdrake

    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 he’s like a Nazi, or that people who judge and condemn others using their religion as lawgiver, ideology setter, are no better.

    I don’t 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.
  • fdrake
    7.1k
    So are you leaving TPF to become a monk after Eärendil? :smile:Leontiskos

    Nah I'm going back to the Society of St. Francis.

    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?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.

    Okay, interesting. I certainly see it, but I also disagree with Christians who would make the supererogatory obligatory.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.
  • Fire Ologist
    1.3k
    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
    fdrake

    You seem to be at a real crossroads because of this issue.

    I’m going to step way, way back for a second.

    What if one’s 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 man’s sake was just that, an opportunity, a gift to you, allowing you to assist in God’s 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 don’t have ample time on our hands to serve others, and must consent to many obligations to do so. This is not to say it doesn’t 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 God’s 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 God’s hands. And that’s ok.

    Without God, that’s 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 hasn’t improved one bit since Cane quarreled with Abel, at least not on our own account. It’s always been easy to lie, to steal, to murder and overall, it’s possible things are worse than ever.

    If one gives one’s 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 person’s 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 don’t 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 agent’s 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.
  • fdrake
    7.1k


    I'm not a believer and have no interest in eschatology. Well that's a lie, I like eschatology.

    The biggest things, like the world, remain, as always, in God’s hands. And that’s ok.Fire Ologist

    Good sir, I believe this is cope.
  • Fire Ologist
    1.3k
    I'm not a believer and have no interest in eschatology. Well that's a lie, I like eschatology.

    The biggest things, like the world, remain, as always, in God’s hands. And that’s ok.
    — Fire Ologist

    Good sir, I believe this is cope.
    fdrake

    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.

    There’s either God, or no reason to imagine a different world.

    I can’t tell if you are having a sort of crisis over this question or not.

    If not, I’ll leave you to it, as I see a proponent of any ideology qua ideology as a placeholder for an individual who isn’t 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.
  • fdrake
    7.1k
    There’s either God, or no reason to imagine a different world.Fire Ologist

    I find this quite sad. You wouldn't want to imagine a better world just for the people in it?

    I can’t tell if you are having a sort of crisis over this question or not.Fire Ologist

    No more than usual.

    If you are, I hope you can find a way to improve things, or rid yourself of the task to do so.Fire Ologist

    I already have rid myself of that responsibility, as have most of us. And we're right to. And we're falling.
  • Fire Ologist
    1.3k
    There’s either God, or no reason to imagine a different world.
    — Fire Ologist

    I find this quite sad. You wouldn't want to imagine a better world just for the people in it?
    fdrake

    Sad that I think this way, or sad for the state of human beings?

    I hope you can find a way to improve things, or rid yourself of the task to do so.
    — Fire Ologist

    I already have rid myself of that responsibility, as have most of us. And we're right to. And we're falling.
    fdrake

    Ok, so if you’ve rid yourself, then you aren’t sad that I think this way, you do as well.

    We are falling. It is sad.

    There is hope. Wish people saw that.
  • fdrake
    7.1k
    Sad that I think this way, or sad for the state of human beings?Fire Ologist

    Both.

    you do as well.Fire Ologist

    I often think things that I find sad.
  • Fire Ologist
    1.3k
    You wouldn't want to imagine a better world just for the people in it?fdrake

    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, I’ve 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.
  • Leontiskos
    4.7k
    Nah I'm going back to the Society of St. Francis.fdrake

    A friar, a gyrovague! That takes me back. Dominic and Francis were only ten years apart.

    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.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.

    I've spoken with several Christians who saw bringing about the kingdom of god as their greatest moral imperativefdrake

    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.

    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.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?

    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.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.
  • fdrake
    7.1k
    I exaggerate a bit here, but you see my point.Fire Ologist

    I believe I do, thanks for clarifying.
  • fdrake
    7.1k
    ne 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.Leontiskos

    Under what conditions would you say someone is really compelled to do something vs if they merely feel compelled to do so something?
  • Leontiskos
    4.7k
    Under what conditions would you say someone is really compelled to do something vs if they merely feel compelled to do so something?fdrake

    Allow me to reframe it. Your monstrosity depends on the relation between volition and compulsion. Here is Aristotle:

    Throwing a cargo overboard in a storm is a somewhat analogous case. No one voluntarily throws away his property if nothing is to come of it, but any sensible person would do so to save the life of himself and the crew.

    Acts of this kind, then, are of a mixed nature, but they more nearly resemble voluntary acts.
    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?
  • fdrake
    7.1k
    A friar, a gyrovague! That takes me back. Dominic and Francis were only ten years apart.Leontiskos

    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.

    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?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.
  • T Clark
    15k
    I’ve been out of town so all I have is my cell phone, no computer. Otherwise I would have participated in this discussion. I would like to say, though, that having @fdrake start such substantive threads helps make up for the fact he’ll no longer be a moderator.
  • Leontiskos
    4.7k
    I used to live with a Fransiscan nun who did lots of outreach work. I'm thus quite fond of Fransiscans.fdrake

    Very cool. Individual Franciscans are hit or miss for me, but I do appreciate their overall ethos and I have met some remarkable individuals.

    ...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.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.

    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".fdrake

    Yes, that would quell many of my critiques. "That would have been a heroic act if he had chosen it himself!"

    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?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 feel—or be—compelled 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.

    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.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.

    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.
    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.

    Even though we are required to do them to fulfil our obligations in some sense.fdrake

    In what sense is one required to use three antibacterial wipes in order to clean the kitchen counter?

    So if one believes one ought to do something about climate change, "your bit" is recycling, but everyone knows it's not enough.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.

    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.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:

    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.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 ceaselessly—who 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
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.9k


    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.

    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?"


    The problem of prominent early views like that of Origen of Alexandria is that, if man can fall away from the divine once (resulting in a "fall into materiality"), then it can presumably happen again. But then how can there be any final beatific return, apokatastasis, the accomplishment of exitus et reditus in salvation history? Won't people always just turn away from the Good again eventually?

    The problem of the Fall and prelapsarian sin is: how can anyone truly "freely" choose evil? Wouldn't choosing evil imply either ignorance of the fact that it is evil or else "weakness of will/incontinence?" There is no rational reason to choose the worse over the better. Therefore, if someone chooses it they are either unable to choose the Good, mistake the worse for the better, or else their actions are arbitrary and determined by no rationality at all (and thus unfree). And this would seem to imply that the Fall must be explained in terms of some sort of fundamental weakness of will or ignorance, in which case the question is "why was this imperfection included?"

    This was still a live issue when St. Anselm was writing De Casu Diaboli, which focuses on how Satan and his demons could fall (essentially the same question). In that work, the student asks the teacher what benefit the angles who stayed loyal to God gain. He replies: “I do not know what it was. But whatever it was, it suffices to know that it was something toward which they could grow and which they did not receive when they were created, so that they might attain it by their own merit."

    The idea here is that a higher good (and for man full conformity to the image of God) requires a sort of self-transcendence and not merely the fulfillment of what is desired by nature. Thus, while Plato differentiates between relative and absolute good, Anselm looks to the good we are drawn to by nature and the super-abundant good sought only in the transcendence of our nature.

    Here it's worth noting that what Eve and Adam are tempted by originally is the promise to "become like God," which is itself the promise offered up by Christ: illumination, theosis, union, and deification.

    In De Concordia, Anselm gives us the idea of perfected freedom as the soul "willing to will what God wills for it to will" (which is in line with St. Bernard of Clairvaux highest rung on the "Ladder of Love"). This is a conception of freedom as only recognized interpersonally long before Hegel, and I think there is a sense in which Anselm's version includes as well the "free will willing itself," of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, in that the perfected free will wills its own freedom to acquiesce to God (beyond natural desire) as its own content (and this can be taken at both the individual level and at the level of global historical Spirit).

    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."

    The soul at birth, created quick to love,
    will move toward anything that pleases it,
    as soon as pleasure causes it to move.

    From what is real your apprehensive power
    extracts an image it displays within you,
    forcing your mind to be attentive to it;

    and if, attentive, it inclines toward this,
    that inclination is love: Nature it is
    which is through pleasure bound anew in you.

    Just as a fire's flames always rise up,
    inspired by its own nature to ascend,
    seeking to be in its own element,

    just so, the captive soul begins its quest,
    the spiritual movement of its love,
    not resting till the thing loved is enjoyed.

    It should be clear to you by now how blind
    to truth those people are, who make the claim
    that every love is, in itself, good love.

    They think this, for love's substance, probably,
    seems always good, but though the wax is good,
    the impression made upon it may be bad."

    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:

    It is the virtuous person who is least dependent on external goods that can be easily lost.xxiii It is also this person who both wants others to flourish and who is most able to weather bad fortune. The person who is wrathful and hateful loses some share of their well-being if fortune dictates that those they hate should find success. The person with the virtues of love and charity flourishes when others flourish, and so is less likely to be forced into zero-sum competition with others.35

    For instance, Socrates’s flourishing is not dependent on his avoiding punishment, and this is what allows him to be free to stand up to his accusers in the Apology, and to stand by his principles in the Crito. Likewise, St. Francis or Laozi could both flourish while retiring into the wilderness with nothing, while St. Paul and Boethius were not robbed of their serenity by imprisonment. By contrast, any well-being attained by the infamous billionaire Jeffery Epstein evaporated as soon as his crimes were exposed and he was deprived of his freedom and his status. Epstein was quickly driven to despair and suicide in prison, while Boethius found the peace to pen one of the enduring masterpieces of ethical and philosophical thought from his cell.36

    To make the point clear: suppose we think that it is truly better “for us” to be Socrates, Martin Luther King, Boethius, or any of the many other people who have been martyred, tortured, imprisoned, or stripped of their property for “doing the right thing.” Suppose we do not believe it would be better to be cowardly versions of these same people, people who default on their beliefs when threatened. If we believe that the former are truly “better off,” then our understanding of well-being and the pursuit of goodness must be able to capture this.

    At the end of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, Sydney Carton sacrifices himself, taking the place of Charles Darnay, who has been sentenced to an unjust execution. As the book closes, Sydney Carton reflects on the good that still manages to flourish in the shadow of the French Reign of Terror. His famous closing lines: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known,” must be explained by any ethics. Is what Darnay does “better for him” or is it “better” in an equivocal sense? Does this depend on Darnay receiving some sort of postmortem extrinsic reward in Heaven? Would it be better for him to have not made this sacrifice? Would it be better for him to be the type of person who would not countenance such an act of sacrifice?

    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!"

    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?

    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.
  • Leontiskos
    4.7k
    Hence, supererogation is neither monstrous (sub-natural) nor angelic (supernatural), but the original, natural state intended for God's image bearer.Count Timothy von Icarus

    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:

    the act of performing more than is required by duty, obligation, or needSupererogation | Merriam-Webster Dictionary

    doing more than necessary:

    -An act of supererogation is an act that is "beyond the call of duty" - it is an act that is over and above what a person is required to do.
    -A man may do more than the law requires of him, and perform works of supererogation.
    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).
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.9k


    I think you mean "deification," not "supererogation." They seem quite different.

    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.
  • Leontiskos
    4.7k
    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.
    Count Timothy von Icarus

    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:

    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.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.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.9k


    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 and 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:

    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
    - Romans 1

    And:

    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;)
    - 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.
  • fdrake
    7.1k
    Very cool. Individual Franciscans are hit or miss for me, but I do appreciate their overall ethos and I have met some remarkable individuals.Leontiskos

    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.

    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.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.

    Yes, that would quell many of my critiques. "That would have been a heroic act if he had chosen it himself!"Leontiskos

    It would've made it a less interesting thread if I went with that.

    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.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
    *
    {I'm sure there are other alternatives}
    . 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.

    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.
    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.

    In what sense is one required to use three antibacterial wipes in order to clean the kitchen counter?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.
  • fdrake
    7.1k
    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.Leontiskos

    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.
  • Captain Homicide
    51
    This may not strictly relate to the OP but I think there are things that aren’t immoral but you still shouldn’t want to be the kind of person that does them for one reason or another. This is something that virtually everyone recognizes yet it’s becoming increasingly unpopular to say so in a hedonistic and laissez faire society. The idea is that if someone isn’t hurting another person then you can’t criticize them even though society has an interest in making sure certain things remain taboo and as uncommon as possible. Not doing so is how you get rotten societies like the one we have now and various dystopias from the likes of Serling and Huxley.
  • Leontiskos
    4.7k
    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.fdrake

    Yes, I agree. :grin:

    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.fdrake

    That’s fine, but I see it as secondary. Either God aligns with the world as it now exists or he doesn’t. 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.

    Involvement is quite a different concept from direct cause though right?fdrake

    Sure, and many realities represent a confluence of agents, such as law.

    I think I've embraced "both" in my prior posts.fdrake

    If you’re 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 it’s 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 don’t 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 it’s 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.”

    I don't think this works. The reason being that there are loads of substitutable acts for the bacterial wipes.fdrake

    I’d say you’re missing 1c, which is an explicit conjunct in the antecedent. All you’re saying is that if 1c is not present then 2 does not follow, and my reasoning explicitly agrees with this.

    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.
    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.

    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".fdrake

    I don’t 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
    *
    or sets of means
    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).

    ---

    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.fdrake

    I think you’re 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 daughter’s duty to remove the stains or merely to wash the clothes? You’re 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 doesn’t make sense to construe her duty that way.

    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.fdrake

    I agree: “If you don’t 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.

    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.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.

    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.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 let’s 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 don’t see how it would. If he isn’t fulfilling his means-obligations it’s 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 succeed—with 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 can’t do it on our own. The crucial question then becomes: where to turn for help? There are many options.
  • Tom Storm
    10k
    But let’s 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 don’t see how it would. If he isn’t fulfilling his means-obligations it’s 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 succeed—with the knowledge that you are only delaying the inevitable. And one can play Camus all they like, but that burns out fast enough.
    Leontiskos

    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.

    At the end of the day we must ask for help. We know we can’t do it on our own. The crucial question then becomes: where to turn for help? There are many options.Leontiskos

    Can you say some more about this?
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