Bernard Williams; IV*—Moral Incapacity, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 93, Issue 1, 1 June 1993, Pages 59–70, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotel.

Can an action cease to be required of a moral agent solely because it comes too costly ? Can self-sacrifice or risk of self-sacrifice serve as a limit on our moral obligations? Two recent articles in Philosophy , concerned primarily with the possibility of supererogatory action, suggest very different answers to these questions.

Owing to a genral dissatisfaction with hedonistic theories of value, a number of recent discussions have sought to identify an agent's selfinterest, individual utility, or personal welfare with what the agent most wants to do, all things considered. Two features of these accounts merit special attention for the argument in this paper. First, on such accounts any desire or aversion which persists in the face of complete information is logically relevant to the determination of an agent's self interest. This includes (...) apparently altruistic desires like a desire for another's happiness as well as more narrow and self-regarding desires like a desire to eat a good meal. Second, when the agent finds himself in a situation where he must choose between incompatible desires, his informed preference determines the act which is most in his self-interest. (shrink)

Many find it plausible to posit a category of supererogatory actions. But the supererogatory resists easy analysis. Traditionally, supererogatory actions are characterized as actions that are morally good, but not morally required; actions that go the call of our moral obligations. As I shall argue in this article, however, the traditional analysis can be accepted only by a view with troubling consequences concerning the structure of the moral point of view. I propose a different analysis that is extensionally correct, avoids (...) the problems of the traditional view, and, incidentally, also defuses any objection to act-consequentialism, or any other first-order moral theory, on grounds that it cannot accommodate the supererogatory. (shrink)

There has been a time in my teaching career that I used to cite in my introductory classes ‘Moral Philosophy’ from Erica Jong's Fear of Flying . The situation leading up to the quote is that the main character, Isadora, is asked a sexual favour by her brother in law, Pierre. Her answer and the subsequent dialogue read then as follows: ‘I can't’ , I said. ‘Come on,’ Pierre said, ‘I'll teach you.’ ‘I didn't mean that … I meant that (...) I can't; morally , I can…’. (shrink)

I claim that the dominant moral-realist understanding of action and moral responsibility cannot provide a comprehensive account of morality since it neglects the irreducibly personal component of the individual’s moral experience. This is not to embrace non-cognitivism, however; indeed, I challenge the whole realist framework of most contemporary moral philosophy. To this end I explore the phenomenon of moral necessity, exemplified by Luther’s declaration that he “has to” continue his protests against the church. I am careful to distinguish this kind (...) of necessity from physical or psychological necessity, from means-end necessity and from the Categorical Imperative, and I suggest that it is far more widespread and far more complex than the realist or non-cognitivist would allow. Thesedeclarations are personal in that they do not entail any necessary universalisability of the judgement; however, their personal nature does not mean that they must collapse into the merely personal realm of whim and preference. Instead, Luther can be said to experience a legitimately objective demand that he behave thus and so, even though others would not experience such a demand in a relevantly similar situation. This irreducible heterogeneity of the moral, I suggest, lies at the heart of the intractability of many moral arguments. My argument can be derived as broadly Wittgensteinian (without being exegetical), and draws on the work of Peter Winch and Bernard Williams. (shrink)

Many believe that traditional consequentialist moral theories are incapable of incorporating the allegedly important phenomenon of supererogation. After surveying the “ties at the top,” “satisficing,” and “egoistic-adjustment” strategies to avoid the supererogation objection, I argue that a recent formulation of utilitarianism incorporating the self-other asymmetry exhibits interesting supererogatory properties. I then incorporate this asymmetry into a version of egoistically-adjusted act utilitarianism, arguing that such a view exhibits very rich supererogatory properties, properties that should assuage the theoretical worries of a vast (...) number of supererogation critics. (shrink)