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
Is moral imagination bound up with supererogation? Or with obligation? Or perhaps neither? What is the end that moral imagination conceives? — Leontiskos
And what is a monstrosity after all? Is it anything more than a matter of constraining or compelling? — Leontiskos
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. — fdrake
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
What I have in mind with a moral imagination is, roughly, a psychological and social concept. — fdrake
I'm sure you can see the Christian theological undertones there, they are quite intentional. I trial ran this discussion with a priest. — fdrake
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
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
existence compels us to a largely unachievable higher nature — fdrake
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
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
I'm sure you can see the Christian theological undertones — fdrake
So are you leaving TPF to become a monk after Eärendil? :smile: — Leontiskos
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
Okay, interesting. I certainly see it, but I also disagree with Christians who would make the supererogatory obligatory. — 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 — fdrake
The biggest things, like the world, remain, as always, in God’s hands. And that’s ok. — Fire Ologist
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
There’s either God, or no reason to imagine a different world. — Fire Ologist
I can’t tell if you are having a sort of crisis over this question or not. — Fire Ologist
If you are, I hope you can find a way to improve things, or rid yourself of the task to do so. — Fire Ologist
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
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
Sad that I think this way, or sad for the state of human beings? — Fire Ologist
you do as well. — Fire Ologist
You wouldn't want to imagine a better world just for the people in it? — fdrake
Nah I'm going back to the Society of St. Francis. — fdrake
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
I've spoken with several Christians who saw bringing about the kingdom of god as their greatest moral imperative — fdrake
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
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
I exaggerate a bit here, but you see my point. — Fire Ologist
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? — fdrake
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
A friar, a gyrovague! That takes me back. Dominic and Francis were only ten years apart. — Leontiskos
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
I used to live with a Fransiscan nun who did lots of outreach work. I'm thus quite fond of Fransiscans. — fdrake
...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
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
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
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
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
Even though we are required to do them to fulfil our obligations in some sense. — fdrake
So if one believes one ought to do something about climate change, "your bit" is recycling, but everyone knows it's not enough. — fdrake
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
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
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.
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).
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."
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?
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?
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
the act of performing more than is required by duty, obligation, or need — Supererogation | 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 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. — Count Timothy von Icarus
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
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
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
Yes, that would quell many of my critiques. "That would have been a heroic act if he had chosen it himself!" — Leontiskos
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
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
In what sense is one required to use three antibacterial wipes in order to clean the kitchen counter? — Leontiskos
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
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
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
Involvement is quite a different concept from direct cause though right? — fdrake
I think I've embraced "both" in my prior posts. — fdrake
I don't think this works. The reason being that there are loads of substitutable acts for the bacterial wipes. — fdrake
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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