• Leontiskos
    4.7k
    "The situation is hopeless, we must take the next step."Tom Storm

    Yes, that's basically it. And I think you end up with a critique similar to Chesterton's critique of the slogan, "You just have to grin and bear it."

    Can you say some more about this?Tom Storm

    It could go in a lot of directions, which is why I left it vague. The two basic options seem to be either hope or desperation, and they lead down very different roads. The darker road justifies the unjustifiable on account of being "in extremis." Making supererogation obligatory seems like a minor case of that.

    A Christian writer like Tolkien incorporates "eucatastrophe." For example, in The Hobbit during the battle of the five armies the hopeless situation is spun on its head with the unanticipated arrival of the Eagles (the servants of Manwe). That is an example of a characteristically Christian hope or possibility. You fight with no understanding of how you could win, and yet with the knowledge that the unexpected is possible. And you do not act out of a rationalizing desperation.
  • fdrake
    7.1k
    This post is just clarification.

    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.Leontiskos

    I am saying that. Though I imagine it can appear that I am saying something different since I see the flavour of agency that institutions and ideologies have as principally inhuman. And at a push I'd commit to human agency being kind of inhuman at its root. That's by the by though.

    All you’re saying is that if 1c is not present then 2 does not follow, and my reasoning explicitly agrees with this.Leontiskos

    Yes. I assumed you were using the obligation of X into obligation of parts of X inference in a prior post. I then attacked the inference as if it were yours. I am making no use of the inference in my arguments. The failure of the inference is part of what leaves me the room to say that some obligations require supererogations, with the requirement being a logical one. The issue is part of the OP, but me writing about it like I have is because I believed you were using the inference against the OP, and I was attacking the inference without using the principle it embodies. I care that supererogatory acts aren't obligatory, I don't want to collapse any supererogations into obligations. That our obligations can require us going above and beyond our obligations in some sense is one of my central theses. That particular sense being {achieving the spirit of our duties or bringing about the kind of world living our obligations aims to bring about or the intended outcome of following our duties to begin with}}.

    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.Leontiskos

    Yes. "Meaningfully" was supposed to convey connection between our duties and why we follow them to begin with - that sense I spoke about in the final sentences of my prior paragraph in this post. If I was talking about fulfilling our duties and how that means we haven't fulfilled out duties, that would be a contradiction - and it's not the tension I care about in this thread. The @Count Timothy von Icarus leveraged this to form a counterargument of sorts, by inflating our obligations above and beyond my rather quotidian portrayal of them, our collective failures then become true "moral failings" of our duties, rather than some failure inherent in our moral conscience and the satisfaction of our duties to begin with. The latter is what I'm advocating. That we really do fulfil our duties, that they are quotidian in comparison to why we follow them, why we follow them casts a shadow on our conduct that renders our duties insufficient. Nevertheless we "do our bit", and it isn't enough.

    That we "do our bit", and it isn't enough, I then interpret as a sense of monstrosity inherent in the "state of things", in our institutions and forms of life. The specific form of monstrosity is that what could be enough are acts of supererogation, the laudable but non-obligate. Even then they are no guarantee. The monstrosity that makes running food banks required to feed people despite massive food surpluses is one that those food banks volunteers' face, if they stop going above and beyond people go hungry. They're thus "expected" to in a manner that goes beyond their duties, and life presents them a threat in the form of a modus tollens impact, if you don't do this then that will not happen. Stop going to work for free and the poor starve.

    That's the same threat we face whenever the letter of our duties does not also fulfil their spirit.

    I hope this is clearer now.
  • Tom Storm
    10k
    Thanks. Have you ever watched Malcolm Guite’s YouTube channel? He’s a very literate English Anglican priest in his 60’s who talks a lot about Tolkien, CS Lewis and the Arthurian romances. He has a rather wonderful vibe.
  • fdrake
    7.1k
    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.Leontiskos

    Yes. Telling people that they must do more to do enough, when we already can't do enough, doesn't work.

    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

    Answers to the problem aren't really about what to do, I think, they're about how to cope with our condition of being unable to do "enough". One way of dealing with that is to try to do enough. Or to try to bring about a state of things were people can do enough. Like @Count Timothy von Icarus engender.

    That said, I think there are other options of how to feel than resignation, absurdity and faith - one could learn to love the taste of the brick wall. I think that goes against our natures more than what we've been talking about in this thread, though.

    Existentialism looks like it provides an answer. I'm going to use this as an opportunity to rant about it. The number of people I see adopt an "existentialist" posture in person is quite high, but it does nothing to stop everyday petty grievances and tragedies from hurting them, and it doesn't allow them to enjoy the pain of it. I see an appeal to absurd as a metacognitive trap, it's how you think you think, but you only think that because you're not looking at how you think. It's also metaphysical stopgap, a refusal to inquire or do more. It's a refusal to be troubled by the troubling. Though doubtless there are more sincere engagements with it than the one I see often.

    I will spare you my comments about faith in this context. But they resemble my comment below about extreme leftism, which I see as a secular form of faith.

    I agree with you that a secular "answer" to the problem is quite difficult. The people I'm aware of who are troubled by these problems are generally socialists or communists, and treat The Revolution in eschatological terms. It will be Kingdom come, but of our own making. The faith they have in a future end-state with no means of imagining how to bring it about. They don't have the option of absolving themselves of all responsibility - all acts of going above and beyond - for bringing it about though. I think they're aware of how fucked things are {our fallenness} and stop thinking about it. It all dissolves into the question "What is to be done?". Though I think they real answer to that question is "What is to be done, that goes above and beyond, that I can actually do without an incredible amount of self sacrifice?". Which I have a lot of respect for. The amount of going above and beyond required from everyone for things to be markedly better may be pretty small indeed, and I can respect the gamble.

    CS Lewis {for which I will retag @Count Timothy von Icarus due to his stanning for the man} has excellent commentary on this in The Screwtape Letters. For those of you which have not read it, this is a series of funny and disturbing essays, written from the perspective of the middle manager devil Screwtape mentoring his enthusiastic but hapless younger sibling Wormwood in the art of tempting mortals to sin. Throughout they fight "The Enemy" - God - principally through perversions of human faith and duty. The ideal state of the sinner in the book is someone who behaves without virtue who believes themselves either righteous or able to absolve themselves of their evil while continuing it.

    To be sure, the Enemy wants men to think of the Future too — just so much as is necessary for now planning the acts of justice or charity which will probably be their duty tomorrow. The duty of planning the morrow's work is today's duty; though its material is borrowed from the future, the duty, like all duties, is in the Present. This is not straw splitting. He does not want men to give the Future their hearts, to place their treasure in it. We do. His ideal is a man who, having worked all day for the good of posterity (if that is his vocation), washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment that is passing over him. But we want a man hag-ridden by the Future —haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth — ready to break the Enemy's commands in the present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the other — dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he will not live to see. We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.

    It follows then, in general, and other things being equal, that it is better for your patient to be filled with anxiety or hope (it doesn't much matter which) about this war than for him to be living in the present. But the phrase “living in the present” is ambiguous. It may describe a process which is really just as much concerned with the Future as anxiety itself. Your man may be untroubled about the Future, not because he is concerned with the Present, but because he has persuaded himself that the Future is, going to be agreeable. As long as that is the real course of his tranquillity, his tranquillity will do us good, because it is only piling up more disappointment, and therefore more impatience, for him when his false hopes are dashed. If, on the other hand, he is aware that horrors may be in store for him and is praying for the virtues, wherewith to meet them, and meanwhile concerning himself with the Present because there, and there alone, all duty, all grace, all knowledge, and all pleasure dwell, his state is very undesirable and should be attacked at once. Here again, our Philological Arm has done good work; try the word “complacency” on him. But, of course, it is most likely that he is “living in the Present” for none of these reasons but simply because his health is good and he is enjoying his work. The phenomenon would then be merely natural. All the same, I should break it up if I were you. No natural phenomenon is really in our favour. And anyway, why should the creature be happy?
    — The Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis

    Lewis' antidote to this was to really give your all in the present and consign the outcomes to the will of God - for posterity and luck to judge, in secular terms. This is a form of living in the present. Notably Lewis sees our duties tomorrow as "acts of justice and charity", which are duties in the expanded sense @Count Timothy von Icarus was talking about. I think whether you read the above similarly to any self help book, or a means for bettering the world, depends upon the scope of duties and what you believe people following their duties successfully look like. From my relatively quotidian perspective on duty, in which people tend to satisfy them in our day to day lives, the above reads like any self help book extolling the virtues of living in the moment. If you instead read Wormwood's target of temptation heroically, that they will indeed plan tomorrows acts of justice and charity and simply pray for grace in their execution and outcome, the issue disappears. But the bar for good human conduct raises to a level that it becomes practically unattainable. At which point, in my view, it beggars belief that we could refer to any human as good accurately. And I do see us as referring to ourselves as good accurately, so what is good must be more quotidian than the world transforming eternal present of Lewis', or @Count Timothy von Icarus's, moral hero.

    The latter moral hero functioning as someone to aspire to, or as the regulative ideal of our moral imagination? I can agree with that. But then we circle the inherency of failure again, and of the impossibility to fulfil that ideal, despite being required to do so by the state of things.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.9k


    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.

    Metaphysical optimism, the idea that we must live "in the best of all possible worlds," is, as far as I can tell, a concern that largely arises during the Reformation. I think David Bentley Hart's book on the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami is a quite good response to this. He uses Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov (and particularly the short story the Grand Inquisitor that is nested inside it) to address this issue.

    It will suffice to say that the position of "metaphysical optimism," so well lampooned in Voltaire's Candide, does not share much in common with the idea of a corrupt and fallen cosmos that has been degenerated by man's free choice to sin and which is ruled over by freely rebellious archons and principalities. This is a world where St. John can say that Satan is the "prince of this world," (John 12:31) and that "the entire cosmos is under the control of the Evil One" (I John 5.19), or where the messenger of the Lord is delayed by a corrupt dominion in Daniel, etc.

    Hart says:

    Now we are able to rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that he will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, he will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes – and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away and he that sits upon the throne will say, ‘Behold, I make all things new...'

    …of a child dying an agonizing death from diphtheria, of a young mother ravaged by cancer, of tens of thousands of Asians swallowed in an instant by the sea, of millions murdered in death camps and gulags and forced famines…Our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred…As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God, but the face of his enemy. It is…a faith that…has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead...

    For, after all, if it is from Christ that we are to learn how God relates himself to sin, suffering, evil, and death, it would seem that he provides us little evidence of anything other than a regal, relentless, and miraculous enmity: sin he forgives, suffering he heals, evil he casts out, and death he conquers. And absolutely nowhere does Christ act as if any of these things are part of the eternal work or purposes of God.

    A key distinction then is that what "God wills" and what "God permits" are not identical.
  • fdrake
    7.1k


    I don't see how metaphysical optimism is relevant. I wasn't trying to say that we live in the best of all possible worlds with that offhand remark, I was trying to say that if we have a duty to adore all of creation, that extends to things we are horrified by. If we don't have that duty then it's a non-issue.

    It would then seem that the Christ in your quote doesn't adore all of creation, and if how he acts becomes duty, there's no paradox.
  • fdrake
    7.1k
    I just want to blame all of you for my search algorithm thinking I'm having a crisis of faith. @Leontiskos @Count Timothy von Icarus
  • Moliere
    5.8k
    *shakes fist at the algorithm, in solidarity*
  • Leontiskos
    4.7k
    - The Search Algorithm knowest thee better than thou knowest thyself. It knowest thy needs even before ye asketh. :razz:

    ---

    - I have not, but thanks for the reference. :up:
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.9k


    First, I'll throw out a proposal: the general issue of "how do norms and duties evolve?" and "is there progress in this dimension?" (and "if there is 'progress' how is it achieved?") are more properly questions for the philosophy of history. Much "moral progress" is not the work of heroic individuals qua individuals, but of institutions, which serve to shape individual identity and action, and which give context and shape individual acts of heroism.

    Of relevance, M.C. Lemon's introduction to his survey of the philosophy of history has some pointed questions for the skeptic of speculative history:

    For example, one might ask sceptics whether they at least accept the notion that, on the whole, ‘history has delivered’ progress in the arts, sciences, economics, government, and quality of life. If the answer is "yes," how do they account for it? Is it chance (thus offering no guarantees for the future)? Or if there is a reason for it, what is this ‘reason’ which is ‘going on in history’?

    Similarly, if the sceptics answer ‘no’, then why not? Again, is the answer chance? Or is there some ‘mechanism’ underlying the course of history which prevents overall continuous progress? If so, what is it, and can it be defeated?

    I would just add that the person who denies progress tout court has the additional difficult of explaining why, presumably, they still think that a biology text book from 2025 is likely to be more correct than one from 1925, and the one from 1925 more accurate than the one from 1825. It seems that one must either deny scientific and technological progress, which seems absurd, or offer some explanation for why it is unique in terms of "progress" as a whole.

    I think the answer to "how does an ethics of individuals motivate social change?" is: "it doesn't." Or at least, "that shouldn't be its focus." Individuals are no doubt important in the gyre of history, but the degree of influence they wield is almost always largely a function of the larger structures they play a role in. It's a historically situated and contingent influence. To be sure, some individuals qua individuals are important as exemplars, as say Socrates or St. Francis are, but their ability to be exemplars is contingent on certain institutions existing and persisting as well (else historical memory of them would simply be lost. Most saints are forgotten).

    Anyhow, I think the classical perspective Lewis draws on so much would have it that what is truly best for us is the perfection of virtue and freedom (the former being necessary for the latter). This obviously is a process that can be aided or hindered by our environment, by our economic, cultural, and historical context.

    Hence, I think the question is a difficult one. How does the individual act as part of the gyre of history? If we can answer the questions:

    Is there progress? And;
    If there is, how does it occur?

    We will have a better idea about how to relate to the demand to go beyond current cultural, historical, and economic conditions, and how monstrous this must be. I would say that we do indeed have a corporate duty to transcend these factors, but the prudent and wise way to do so is a difficult question.

    So, perhaps one way of dealing with monstrosity is to look to higher levels of organization. For example, it is one thing for one man in a standoff to disarm, a heroic sacrifice, another for all involved to drop their weapons (perhaps of obvious benefit to all).

    I
  • Leontiskos
    4.7k
    Yes. Telling people that they must do more to do enough, when we already can't do enough, doesn't work.fdrake

    I'm glad we agree on this.

    Answers to the problem aren't really about what to do, I think, they're about how to cope with our condition of being unable to do "enough". One way of dealing with that is to try to do enough. Or to try to bring about a state of things were people can do enough.fdrake

    Okay, but it seems like these fold right back into the problem of what to do.

    I see an appeal to absurd as a metacognitive trap, it's how you think you think, but you only think that because you're not looking at how you think. It's also metaphysical stopgap, a refusal to inquire or do more. It's a refusal to be troubled by the troubling.fdrake

    Yes, I can definitely see that.

    ...extreme leftism, which I see as a secular form of faith.fdrake

    I agree, but I also think that more moderate issues have a tendency to become a secular proxy for religion, such as climate concerns, civil rights concerns, etc.

    The people I'm aware of who are troubled by these problems are generally socialists or communists, and treat The Revolution in eschatological terms. It will be Kingdom come, but of our own making. The faith they have in a future end-state with no means of imagining how to bring it about.fdrake

    Right: nothing apart from bringing about the Revolution.

    CS Lewis has excellent commentary on this in The Screwtape Letters.fdrake

    Yes, that was a highly appropriate quote from Lewis. It is a better way of illustrating my point above about . But I think it also goes back to the issue of . Lewis admires the man who does his work but then, "washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment."

    Elsewhere Lewis writes on the importance of putting first things first and second things second; and that idolatry occurs when second things are put first. This mixes in well with . An entailment of Przywara's project is that when the transcendent God is removed from the picture, everything falls out of proportion (and this is a bit like the way that the Sun orders the solar system). How, for example, is the secular to apply proportion and moderation to their concern for recycling? Is it at all strange that extreme leftism looks like fundamentalist religion? When we move away from the rural setting and into the ideational setting of the city-dweller, how are proportion and moderation to be brought to the issues that the extreme leftist champions? I'm not sure that the secular can ultimately contextualize issues at all, given the way that the "moral imagination" is so variable and malleable.

    Notably Lewis sees our duties tomorrow as "acts of justice and charity", which are duties in the expanded sense...fdrake

    Charity is a duty for the Christian.
    ("That's not to say that what is obligatory for a Christian is the same as what is obligatory for a non-Christian" - .)

    But the bar for good human conduct raises to a level that it becomes practically unattainable.fdrake

    For Lewis? Why?

    And I do see us as referring to ourselves as good accurately, so what is good must be more quotidian than the world transforming eternal present of Lewis', or Count Timothy von Icarus's, moral hero.fdrake

    But it seems you are now back to the idea that good = attainable = insufficient = non-transformative. "We are all good even though we will ultimately fail to do what must be done."

    I mean, people like to say they're good. They like to say that everyone does their duty. Especially in a democracy. Because then everyone can pat each other on the back and feel good about themselves, despite the fact that the ship is clearly going down. I admit it's all rather bewildering once you catch a glimpse of what is actually going on, but it really does seem to be going on.

    The latter moral hero functioning as someone to aspire to, or as the regulative ideal of our moral imagination? I can agree with that. But then we circle the inherency of failure again, and of the impossibility to fulfil that ideal, despite being required to do so by the state of things.fdrake

    It must eventually be brought up that Screwtape is not equally concerned with Christians and non-Christians. If failure were inherent then Wormwood need not apply for the job, for the job is otiose. Failure is not inherent for Lewis. But Lewis would agree that if success is found by "pursuit of the rainbow's end," then failure is inherent. That is Screwtape's goal. Does Screwtape need to tempt the secular at all? Should he be concerned that the secular (social justice warrior) might not pursue the rainbow's end?

    (Edit: The eschatological issue is definitely interesting. I had intended to speak to it more directly than I did... Time is not on my side, as I am trying to fit in a number of threads before I have to take off this evening...)
  • Leontiskos
    4.7k
    I am saying that. Though I imagine it can appear that I am saying something different since I see the flavour of agency that institutions and ideologies have as principally inhuman. And at a push I'd commit to human agency being kind of inhuman at its root. That's by the by though.fdrake

    Hmm, okay...

    Yes. I assumed you were using the obligation of X into obligation of parts of X inference in a prior post. I then attacked the inference as if it were yours. I am making no use of the inference in my arguments. The failure of the inference is part of what leaves me the room to say that some obligations require supererogations, with the requirement being a logical one. The issue is part of the OP, but me writing about it like I have is because I believed you were using the inference against the OP, and I was attacking the inference without using the principle it embodies. I care that supererogatory acts aren't obligatory, I don't want to collapse any supererogations into obligations. That our obligations can require us going above and beyond our obligations in some sense is one of my central theses. That particular sense being {achieving the spirit of our duties or bringing about the kind of world living our obligations aims to bring about or the intended outcome of following our duties to begin with}}.fdrake

    I'm still not getting a lot of traction on this stuff. I would say that if someone ignores the spirit of an obligation and clings to the letter of the obligation, then they are failing in their obligations. I don't think the spirit of an obligation can be a supererogation. It still feels like you are conflating obligation and supererogation.

    The failure of the inference is part of what leaves me the room to say that some obligations require supererogations, with the requirement being a logical one.fdrake

    Can you say more explicitly what you mean by "the inference"? I tried to speak to the general issue with the paragraph beginning, "..."

    The Count Timothy von Icarus leveraged this to form a counterargument of sorts, by inflating our obligations above and beyond my rather quotidian portrayal of them, our collective failures then become true "moral failings" of our duties, rather than some failure inherent in our moral conscience and the satisfaction of our duties to begin with. The latter is what I'm advocating. That we really do fulfil our duties, that they are quotidian in comparison to why we follow them, why we follow them casts a shadow on our conduct that renders our duties insufficient. Nevertheless we "do our bit", and it isn't enough.fdrake

    Creating a strong distinction between the letter and the spirit of an obligation feels much the same as creating a strong distinction between the duty and the reason for the duty. Just as I would say that merely fulfilling the letter is not fulfilling the obligation, so too I would say that performing a duty without understanding and involving the reason behind the duty is a failure in the duty. From what I can see, the "why" is not supererogatory.

    The monstrosity that makes running food banks required to feed people despite massive food surpluses is one that those food banks volunteers' face, if they stop going above and beyond people go hungry. They're thus "expected" to in a manner that goes beyond their duties, and life presents them a threat in the form of a modus tollens impact, if you don't do this then that will not happen. Stop going to work for free and the poor starve.fdrake

    The concrete example is very much welcome.

    Let's take a concrete example like this and do the following:

    "If I do X, then Y occurs. Y cannot occur without X, and Y must occur."

    Then we want to ask whether X is obligatory, supererogatory, arduous, heroic, unsustainable, etc. And whether Y is obligatory, supererogatory, necessary, etc.

    If we were to take the food bank example then we would say that X = <produce food surplus or food waste> and Y = <people do not go hungry>. I won't hold you to that example, but we can use it if you want. I want to analyze a concrete example and see if the word "supererogatory" is being used accurately, and if not, what better words could be used.
  • fdrake
    7.1k
    Can you say more explicitly what you mean by "the inference"? I tried to speak to the general issue with the paragraph beginning, "↪I don’t see how the parts are going to help..."Leontiskos

    The following inference:

    I'm still not getting a lot of traction on this stuff. I would say that if someone ignores the spirit of an obligation and clings to the letter of the obligation, then they are failing in their obligations. I don't think the spirit of an obligation can be a supererogation. It still feels like you are conflating obligation and supererogation.Leontiskos

    If I construe the spirit of an obligation as "engendering the kind of world that obligation seeks to create" and the obligation's letter as "the acts constitutive of its duty", maybe that makes it clearer. Satisfying the spirit of an obligation has something like a success criterion for fulfilling a purpose or higher cause, and a duty doesn't need such a purpose or a higher cause but often {typically} has them.

    Some duties are relatively transparent in their spirit and letter. The letter of my duty to take out the trashing is... taking out the trash. The spirit is a bunch of things like "letting rubbish pile up in your house is negligent" {a vice}, "letting rubbish pile up in your house degrades the quality of your and your neighbours lives" {disrespect to community}, just general ethical principles. If one took out the trash and left it in the street, you've satisfied the letter of your duty of taking out the trash, but contradicted some of the tenets that act is supposed to embody. You definitely took out the trash, you were nevertheless not considerate to your neighbours.

    A small item may escape your trash bag, it counts as litter, do you run after it when it blows away in the wind? Well if you don't you've littered, which is inconsiderate by the same principle, but at that point no one particularly cares, so no one would see it as violating the spirit of your duties if you didn't chase after it. One may be perversely or minimally compliant, one may also do minor violations of the spirit of ones duties and count as satisfying them.

    The room opened up by perverse compliance and minor violations of a duty's spirit is also room for the failure of the aims of duty while satisfying its letter.

    Imagine a world, then, in which one could not fulfil the aim of being considerate to one's neighbours without running after an escaped piece of trash in a gale. That's a tyrannical and absurd standard, no one can live chasing after every piece of trash like that - metaphorically and literally. Nevertheless, the world demands you relate to yourself and others as such a tyrant in order to fulfil your duties about the things which matter in spirit and not just in letter.

    Why?

    If we were to take the food bank example then we would say that X = <produce food surplus or food waste> and Y = <people do not go hungry>. I won't hold you to that example, but we can use it if you want. I want to analyze a concrete example and see if the word "supererogatory" is being used accurately, and if not, what better words could be used.Leontiskos

    I understand something as supererogatory if it is laudable but not required for one's duties, like chasing after the trash in a gale. Laudability arises from embodying the spirit of one's duties to a high degree, heights of considerateness and self sacrifice.

    The food bank example I think is a good one. I want to take it as given that no one is duty bound to work full time for free in a food bank, it isn't a moral requirement for anyone to do that, but some people take up the burden. What would happen if some people did not take up the burden? The poor would starve. Working as a volunteer full time in a food bank is laudable. Thus, working as a volunteer full time in a food bank is supererogatory, as it's laudable and goes above and beyond one's duties of care for humanity.

    But let's have a look at what happens if no one takes up the burden - which is, no one does something which is always permissible not to do -, the poor then starve. Some people working at the foodbank in that manner is necessary for the poor not to starve - necessary as a logical requirement, the poor would starve without it. But it was also shown not to be a moral duty to work full time there as a volunteer.

    The aporia arises because if some people did not compel themselves to go above and beyond their duties, the poor would starve. The state of things thus requires {logically} that people go above and beyond their duties to ensure that widely held requirements for a just society. That is a much greater imposition than occasionally chasing after trash in a strong wind. That's the monstrosity I'm speaking about.
  • Leontiskos
    4.7k


    That is a good angle of approach. As I reflect on your post, the first thing that comes to mind is that the whole neo-religious and systematic framing of Comte's sociology seems mistaken. The sociological lens is unhelpful when it is given primacy over all else. It leads naturally to dehumanization and despair. Here I think of Mother Teresa's quip about loving the poor rather than merely fighting poverty. The "fight against poverty" reifies and depersonalizes the issue.

    But beyond that and regarding @fdrake's "monstrosity," I think subsidiarity is the most necessary political doctrine at the moment. People think they should solve worldwide hunger because they confuse themselves for God. The better thing to do is to address hunger in your own neighborhood and let the other neighborhoods address their own problems. The "moral imagination" is often tripping over itself by "making the best the enemy of the good." If it were not so busy fretting over world hunger, it would have already had a real impact on local hunger. And in fighting local hunger one learns grassroots strategies which achieve more than mere symptom-relief. Indeed the whole concept of "solving a problem" via interventionism may be a non-starter.

    Earlier I critiqued the "moral imagination" for failing to understand the importance of stability and conservatism—for failing to avoid the French Revolution. More generally, the problem lies in salivating over "the final solution," and this goes back to Mother Teresa's quote. The problem lies in becoming so fixated on solving the problem once and for all, that one fails to see progress short of a solution, and one fails to see contextualizing and countervailing forces. In particular, one fails to see the finitude of means. There is a failure to see, for example, that if all resources are marshaled in favor of Green Energy, then severely detrimental effects will occur as a result of this misappropriation of resources. It is said that the demons characteristically destroy humans by giving them true knowledge at the wrong time.

    In some sense, to draw the dilemma between evil and monstrosity is to have already justified monstrosity. Maybe the monstrosity does not exist after all, if the problem of starvation is not up to one man, or is not to be solved in one year. Even heroic acts will not solve such problems quickly, and one could easily destroy themselves with burnout, thus creating a counterfactually inferior contribution to the problem. Many of our problems are much bigger and older than we are, and it is therefore unrealistic to map them on the small scales of decades or of individuals.

    This post is rather unfocused, but in general I think we need to be realistic about the proportion between the contributions of finite agents to large problems. Second, I think we need to distinguish between self-created problems and pre-existing problems. Self-created problems such as recycling or vice have more cause for despair than pre-existing problems where progress has occurred over time, such as hunger.
  • Leontiskos
    4.7k
    If I construe the spirit of an obligation as "engendering the kind of world that obligation seeks to create" and the obligation's letter as "the acts constitutive of its duty", maybe that makes it clearer. Satisfying the spirit of an obligation has something like a success criterion for fulfilling a purpose or higher cause, and a duty doesn't need such a purpose or a higher cause but often {typically} has them.fdrake

    Okay, but do we have to distinguish between a duty and a hypothetical imperative? Not every goal of betterment implicates duty.

    Some duties are relatively transparent in their spirit and letter. The letter of my duty to take out the trashing is... taking out the trash. The spirit is a bunch of things like "letting rubbish pile up in your house is negligent" {a vice}, "letting rubbish pile up in your house degrades the quality of your and your neighbours lives" {disrespect to community}, just general ethical principles. If one took out the trash and left it in the street, you've satisfied the letter of your duty of taking out the trash, but contradicted some of the tenets that act is supposed to embody. You definitely took out the trash, you were nevertheless not considerate to your neighbours.fdrake

    Let me quote the earlier point I referred to:

    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 [...] 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.Leontiskos

    So on my view an obligatory means always presupposes an obligatory end. When you want to create a strong distinction between the duty-act and the reason for the duty-act, such that the first is obligatory and the second bears on supererogation, I think you have inappropriately sundered the means from the end, and thus sundered the wholeness and rationale of the duty. Granted, your letter/spirit distinction is a little bit different than your act/reason distinction, but I think the wholeness of means-end is very similar to the wholeness of letter-spirit. Sundering this wholeness results in incorrect reasoning.

    One may be perversely or minimally compliant, one may also do minor violations of the spirit of ones duties and count as satisfying them.fdrake

    Agreed.

    That's a tyrannical and absurd standard, no one can live chasing after every piece of trash like that - metaphorically and literally.fdrake

    You've here identified the reason why we are not obliged to do such a thing - why it does not fall within the duty.

    The room opened up by perverse compliance and minor violations of a duty's spirit is also room for the failure of the aims of duty while satisfying its letter.fdrake

    I think this is too loose. Perverse compliance != minor violations != non-violations (such as the gale carrying away a loose piece of trash). This seems to be your argument:

    1. Someone can fulfill the letter of a duty without fulfilling the spirit of a duty
    2. If the letter is fulfilled then the duty is fulfilled
    3. Therefore, the duty can be fulfilled without its spirit being fulfilled
    4. Therefore, the fulfilling of the spirit of the duty is supererogatory

    I see the error coming in (2), which sunders the wholeness of the letter-spirit unity.

    Nevertheless, the world demands you relate to yourself and others as such a tyrant in order to fulfil your duties about the things which matter in spirit and not just in letter.fdrake

    I don't see how requiring someone to fulfill the spirit of their duty is tyrannical.

    I understand something as supererogatory if it is laudable but not required for one's duties, like chasing after the trash in a gale. Laudability arises from embodying the spirit of one's duties to a high degree, heights of considerateness and self sacrifice.fdrake

    Okay so:

    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?Leontiskos

    ...you want to say that a supererogatory act is motivated by, "embodying the spirit of one's duties to a high degree," or basically by interpolating duty.

    The food bank example I think is a good one. I want to take it as given that no one is duty bound to work full time for free in a food bank, it isn't a moral requirement for anyone to do that, but some people take up the burden. What would happen if some people did not take up the burden? The poor would starve. Working as a volunteer full time in a food bank is laudable. Thus, working as a volunteer full time in a food bank is supererogatory, as it's laudable and goes above and beyond one's duties of care for humanity.

    But let's have a look at what happens if no one takes up the burden - which is, no one does something which is always permissible not to do -, the poor then starve. Some people working at the foodbank in that manner is necessary for the poor not to starve - necessary as a logical requirement, the poor would starve without it. But it was also shown not to be a moral duty to work full time there as a volunteer.

    The aporia arises because if some people did not compel themselves to go above and beyond their duties, the poor would starve. The state of things thus requires {logically} that people go above and beyond their duties to ensure that widely held requirements for a just society. That is a much greater imposition than occasionally chasing after trash in a strong wind. That's the monstrosity I'm speaking about.
    fdrake

    Okay, good. What are some of the conflicting intuitions at play here, regarding X and Y (from above)?

    • Y is required for a just society, and therefore we are required to bring it about
    • X is not obligatory
    • -
    • If something is required, then it is obligatory
    • An obligatory end entails obligatory means

    I am more and more confident in the thesis that the issue is incorrect reasoning rather than a monstrosity (although we can always look at the phenomenology of the "monstrosity").

    Engaging with modern views of morality almost always involves engaging modern notions of justice, and my conversation with Bob Ross was no exception. Ross was using "injustice" in a loose, and in my opinion inaccurate, sense. I think the same thing is happening here. Your premise is, "If someone starves, then an injustice has occurred." But what does that really mean? People and animals have been starving for a very long time, and it's hard to see what this has to do with injustice in any precise sense. Much of this thread strikes me as an issue of language being used poetically, and then arguments being drawn from that poetic usage. "Justice" seems to be a case in point. What do you really mean by that word, "justice"? Is it really unjust that someone should starve? Why?

    To revisit the question of how a properly supererogatory act is motivated, I don't think it is as closely aligned to duty as you do. On my view the supererogatory has to do with what is better or what is ideal, and this is quite different from what is obligatory. This is why 's point about "the best of all possible worlds" is perhaps more pertinent than it first appears to be. The better and the best are not obligatory. And note how different solving starvation is from solving climate change. The former is an appeal to what is better or best, whereas the latter is more essentially an appeal to what is necessary qua survival.

    I'll leave it there for now, even though I am doing little more than touching on further considerations.
  • fdrake
    7.1k


    I've run out of steam for now. Thanks for the excellent discussion.
  • Leontiskos
    4.7k
    - Sounds good. I was planning to write one more post before declaring myself "out of steam" (or else time), so this works out well. Thanks to you too.
  • ENOAH
    936


    Your post was interesting.

    Indirectly related is how in Quentin Tarantino movies, he makes us see always a hierarchy of evil: there's the bad guy(s), often a gangster(s); but soon enough the Real Sicko(s) appear.

    I know Im simplifying and paraphrasing but you refer to the human as being doomed to a condition of monstrosity (because we always faced with evil (choices)).

    I think it is only in History (Mind) that we are potentially so doomed (conditioned). Because (though almost trite to say) History moves dialectically and difference requires varying degrees of evil and good: to move. I think as human animals, like all other creatures (and why should we be inherently different?), there is no good and evil, no difference. We just are.
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