Abstract
In this chapter, I seek a better understanding of both supererogation and imperfect duties in the hopes of coming up with an account of what it is to go above and beyond the call of an imperfect duty. I argue that we can go above and beyond the call of duty, not only by performing actions but also by forming attitudes. And I argue that what’s constitutive of fulfilling an imperfect duty is forming certain attitudes. I conclude, therefore, that we can go above and beyond the call of an imperfect duty by forming attitudes that are morally better than those that we must at a minimum form simply to count as having the end that it requires us to have. Along the way, I show that imperfect duties provide us with neither too much nor too little latitude in choosing which ends to pursue as well as when, and to what extent, to pursue them.
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Notes
- 1.
For instance, David Heyd suggests both that “‘supererogation’ is recognized only as a class of acts” (1980, 313) and that “since Kant sometimes defines imperfect duties as duties to adopt ends (rather than engage in particular acts), supererogation and imperfect duty do not belong to the same level of discourse” (2019).
- 2.
- 3.
These all consist in forming certain attitudes. As Michael Bratman explains, plans are intentions that “typically concern relatively specific courses of action extended over time” (2007, 27). For instance, one might plan to spend the morning grading exams and the afternoon playing golf. And policies are intentions to perform “a certain kind of action on certain kinds of potentially recurrent occasions—for example, to buckling up one’s seat belt when one drives, or to having at most one beer at dinner” (2007, 27).
- 4.
Several philosophers (e.g., Brinkmann 2015, 72; Heyd 1982, 121; Hill 1971, 56; Stocker 1967, 508) have argued that an imperfect duty is just a disjunctive duty—that is, a “duty to perform (at least) one member of a non-singleton, non-empty set of actions” (Brinkmann 2015, 71). But if, following Kant, we take imperfect duties to be duties to have ends, then this can’t be right given that disjunctive duties are instead duties to perform actions. As we’ll see, this makes disjunctive duties perfect duties—at least, on a Kantian account of the distinction.
- 5.
As Kant says, “to promote according to one’s means [Vermögen] the happiness of others in need, without hoping for something in return, is every man’s duty” (MM 6:456).
- 6.
See Singer (1972, 231).
- 7.
To illustrate the difference between a golden opportunity and a favorable opportunity, consider The Drowning Children Case, which I borrow with revision from Travis Timmerman (2015, 208–9). In this case, opportunities to save children from drowning are ubiquitous rather than extremely rare, as they are in The Drowning Child Case. Indeed, in The Drowning Children Case, there is—nearby to where you live, work, and play—a vast stretch of land covered with hundreds of shallow ponds, each with a small child who will drown unless you pull them to safety. Saving any individual child would cost you only $200. But whenever a child drowns or is pulled to safety, they are replaced with some other drowning child, and each additional child that you save costs you an additional $200. Thus, whereas saving the drowning child is, in The Drowning Child Case, a golden opportunity, saving a given drowning child, in The Drowning Children Case, is only a favorable opportunity.
- 8.
This perfect duty to take advantage of a sufficient number of the favorable opportunities that arise derives from the imperfect duty to have helping those in need as a life-shaping end. For, as Barbara Herman points out, “imperfect duties impose requirements directly on ends, only indirectly on actions” (2022, 65, note 16).
- 9.
We have to be careful here, for even the perfect duty to, say, show up to a specific event at a precise time on a particular date leaves you with a fair bit of latitude, as there are many different token instances of this required act-type to choose from. There’s your showing up in a black dress, and there’s your showing up in a red dress. There’s your showing up with a smile, and there’s your showing up with a frown, etc. See Chisholm (1963, 4) and Stocker (1967). But, whereas a perfect duty allows you to choose only which permissible instance of a required act-type to perform, an imperfect duty allows you to choose, to some extent, whether to perform more or less of a required act-type. As Kant notes about the imperfect duty of beneficence, “the duty has in it a latitude for doing more or less, and no specific limits can be assigned to what should be done” (MM 6:393).
- 10.
Like Marcia Baron (1987, 242), I interpret Kant to be holding that a duty to adopt a maxim of actions is the same thing as a duty to adopt the end that those actions would promote.
- 11.
This does not mean that one must always choose to donate to the most effective charity, for effectiveness needn’t be the only thing that’s relevant—see Portmore 2019a, 214–5. In any case, I’ll have a lot more to say about the sort of latitude that imperfect duties provide in Sect. 4.
- 12.
Volunteers for Meals on Wheels deliver meals and friendly greetings to seniors in need.
- 13.
Perfect duties and imperfect duties are logical contraries like ‘tall’ and ‘short’, not logical contradictories like ‘tall’ and ‘not tall’. For there may be duties that prescribe (or proscribe) something other than either acts or ends, and such duties would be neither perfect nor imperfect. For an example, see note 26 below.
- 14.
Some suggest that a perfect duty is a duty to perform particular acts (see, e.g., Igneski 2006, 445; Noggle 2009, 7; and Stohr 2011, 50). But this won’t do. As Michael Stocker notes, “We fulfil our duties by performing acts. But it is never a duty to do any [particular] act” (1967, 507). Thus, we are never obligated to perform particular acts; we are only ever obligated to perform some (but no particular) instance of a given act-type. What’s more, the duty to perform at least one of acts A, B, C, and D (what’s known as a disjunctive duty) is a perfect duty even though it’s not a duty to perform any particular act. It, like all perfect duties, is a duty to perform (or refrain from performing) some act-type. It’s just that, in this case, the relevant act-type is the at-least-one-of-the-given-set type.
- 15.
If there is a perfect duty to refrain from lying, then lying is never morally justified. But, even so, one could be excused from blame for lying. For instance, it seems that one wouldn’t be blameworthy for lying under duress. For it seems that duress can excuse, even if not justify, lying.
- 16.
Frances Kamm (1996, 264–75) calls this a specified constraint.
- 17.
- 18.
- 19.
I borrow the term ‘action-regulating’ from Salam (2016, 106).
- 20.
- 21.
Of course, given that Mr. Scrooge was a selfish miser, we can assume that he didn’t have the attitudes that are constitutive of having helping those in need as a life-shaping end. So, he thereby violated his imperfect duty to have this as a life-shaping end.
- 22.
I would concede that he exceeded what he was required to do on that particular occasion, as the only thing that he was required to do on that particular occasion was to refrain from doing anything morally bad. But I deny that this is sufficient for going above and beyond the call of duty. For, as I see it, a subject doesn’t go above and beyond the call of duty by φ-ing if they only partially or merely minimally fulfill some duty by φ-ing.
- 23.
Note that, as I see it, the duty of beneficence includes both the imperfect duty to have helping those in need as a life-shaping end and, derivatively, the perfect duty to act throughout one’s life in a way that’s consistent with having this as a life-shaping end—thus, taking advantage of a sufficient number of favorable opportunities to help those in need. Note, also, that although I’ve chosen to formulate the duty of beneficence as a duty to help those in need, I could have chosen to formulate it as a duty to promote the happiness of others regardless of whether they’re in need. Or I could have chosen to formulate it as a duty to advance the ends of others regardless of whether doing so would promote their happiness or satisfy their needs. But none of my arguments here will hinge on this choice. Lastly, the duty of beneficence is, as I see it, a duty to make helping those in need “a serious, major, continually relevant, life-shaping end” (Hill, 2002, 206). By contrast, less demanding imperfect duties require only that you adopt something as a relatively minor end.
- 24.
Someone might deny that my visiting her on Wednesday is morally better than my refraining from visiting her on Wednesday, arguing that whether my φ-ing is morally better than my ψ-ing depends, not on how what I would do if I were to φ compares with what I would do if I were to ψ, but rather on how what I could do if I were to φ compares with what I could do if I were to ψ. But this won’t work if we assume that (1) the best thing that I could do if I were to visit her on Wednesday would be to visit her each day Wednesday through Saturday, that (2) the best thing that I could do if I were to refrain from visiting her on Wednesday would be to visit each day Thursday through Saturday, and that (3) the former is morally better than the latter.
- 25.
- 26.
I call these attitude-regulating duties (i.e., duties that regulate reasons-responsive attitudes such as fear, desire, belief, intention, resentment, admiration, etc.) noetic duties—the word ‘noetic’ deriving from the Greek word ‘νοητόν’ (or ‘noētón’), meaning ‘intelligible’ or ‘the object of the operation of the mind/intellect’.
- 27.
Daniel Star suggested this case to Roger Crisp as a possible instance of supererogatory feeling. See Crisp (2015) (139, note 9).
- 28.
I’m imagining that despite this being their sole life-shaping end, their commitment to this end is not in any way fanatical. Thus, they don’t neglect their children, as they don’t have any. And they don’t neglect their friends, as they’re all intertwined in their altruistic pursuits. Imagine, then, that they have a good human life—just one without such non-altruistic ends as mastering Kung Fu or winning Olympic gold.
- 29.
But we rarely do things with the intention of acquiring certain ends. For, as Thomas E. Hill, Jr. notes, “the occasions we might describe as deliberately adopting ends are relatively rare” (2002, 268). And, as Andrews Reath notes, “it is…common to ‘fall into’ having certain ends. You become drawn to some activity out of interest and, over time, you find that it is important to you and has become one of your ends” (2009, 201).
- 30.
- 31.
I’m assuming that visiting her three times is morally better than visiting her only twice. But note that going above and beyond the call of duty is not simply the oversubscription of a disjunctive duty. For it could be that visiting her six times would be too much and, so, morally worse than visiting her only twice. Visiting her six times would, then, be an oversubscription of the disjunctive duty to perform at least two members of the set {visit Monday, visit Tuesday, visit Wednesday, visit Thursday, visit Friday, visit Saturday, visit Sunday}, but it would not be supererogatory.
- 32.
This definition is maximalist because it stems from the view known as maximalism. Maximalism contrasts with omnisn. Omnism—which derives from the Latin word ‘omni’, meaning ‘all’—holds that the deontic statuses of all options are determined by what ultimately matters (e.g., utility), whereas maximalism holds that only the deontic statuses of maximal options are determined by what ultimately matters and that the deontic statuses of non-maximal options are instead determined by the deontic statuses of the maximal options that entail it. See Portmore (2019a).
- 33.
Jens Timmermann (2005) is a proponent of the rigorist interpretation. He interprets Kant to be saying that it is never morally permissible to pursue our discretionary ends when we could instead be pursuing our obligatory ends.
- 34.
Thomas E. Hill, Jr. seems to be a proponent of the latitudinarian interpretation. He interprets Kant to be saying that “imperfect duties allow us to do what we please on some occasions even if this is not an act of a kind prescribed by moral principles and even if we could on those occasions do something of a kind that is prescribed” (1992, 155).
- 35.
Some label this the latitudinarian interpretation: “Latitudinarians believe that pursuing our own happiness and non-moral projects, whilst not itself morally obligatory, is rational and morally permissible” (Sticker & van Ackern, 2018, 409). But I think that it’s important to keep this moderate position distinct from what I’ve called the latitudinarian interpretation.
- 36.
Here, I’m thinking of scalar ends. And “where an end is scalar, where more is better, it will be a matter of rationality to maximize” (Herman, 2022, 24). For instance, these three ends all seem to be scalar ends, where it makes sense to think that more is better. Admittedly, though, there are also non-scalar ends. And where an end is non-scalar, “where more is not better—friendship is a good example of such an end—the correct relation to the end may instead be to instantiate it, to give it a role in one’s life, shaped by the non-scalar values it represents” (Herman, 2022, 24).
- 37.
The thought here is not one about language and the vagueness of certain words. Rather, the thought is that morality sometimes fails to give any precise specification of what counts as pursuing/achieving our obligatory ends and that agents sometimes fail to give any precise specification of what counts as pursuing/achieving their discretionary ends.
- 38.
To hold that, for some proposition p, it’s indeterminate whether p is to hold that it’s neither true nor false that p.
- 39.
- 40.
I plan on doing so in a book tentatively entitled Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends. For helpful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter, I thank Joseph Bowen, Peter Graham, David Heyd, and Theron Pummer.
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Portmore, D.W. (2023). Latitude, Supererogation, and Imperfect Duties. In: Heyd, D. (eds) Handbook of Supererogation. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3633-5_5
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