Moral Demandingness

Some moral theories — particularly versions of impartial maximizing act-consequentialism such as act-utilitarianism — have been accused of making overly severe demands on agents. This paper aims to clarify what exactly this line of objection is supposed to be, by distinguishing it from some other but closely related objections. The final part of the paper acknowledges some difficulties the demandingness objection poses for my rule-consequentialism.

Morality is demanding; this is a platitude. It is thus no surprise when we find that moral theories too, when we look into what they require, turn out to be demanding. However, there is at least one moral theory—consequentialism—that is said to be beset by this demandingness problem. This calls for an explanation: Why only consequentialism? This then leads to related questions: What is the demandingness problematic about? What exactly does it claim? Finally, there is the question of what we do if we accept that there is a demandingness problem for consequentialism: How can consequentialists respond? The present chapter sets out to answer these questions (or at least point to how they could be answered).

A cognitivist form of virtue ethics explains both how moral reasons are reasonably partial and how one can relate to oneself in a non-alienated way. Drawing upon work by Sartre and Williams, the paper argues that an explanation of the idea of integrity is indeed a way of resisting a consequentialist understanding of demandingness. This is not to deny that there are duties of immediate rescue or natural duties of general benevolence. Given the state of the world morality is, indeed, demanding, but not in the sense defended by Elizabeth Ashford and Peter Unger.

In “The Wisdom of Oedipus and the Idea of a Moral Cosmos”, Raymond Geuss contrasts the non-moralised worldview of Ancient Greek tragedy with the attempt of philosophers to defend a moral cosmos, i. e. a wellordered, coherent moral world. Geuss calls this a “philosophy of good news” because it depicts the world as not indifferent to our moral concerns and efforts. Kant would be such a philosopher of good news, offering “perhaps the thinnest and most minimalistic version of the gospel”. The aim of this article is not mere criticism of Geuss’ interpretation of Kant, but a reflection on the demandingness of Kant’s conception of morality. I argue that Kant’s moral philosophy embraces a fundamental aspect of the tragic worldview: it does not rule out the possibility that moral requirements become extremely demanding. However, I argue that demandingness is not intrinsic to morality, but due to contingent aspects of the circumstances. Although Kant rules out collision between grounds of obligation, it may be de facto impossible to comply with a specific duty that is very stringent without having to sacrifice other moral commitments or even one’s own happiness. Since injustice and lawlessness are often the causes of moral demandingness, the rule of law is the best means to reduce demandingness. I conclude that despite demandingness, morality can provide meaning to our existence. This meaning, and not the hope in happiness in the afterlife, is the actual good news of Kant’s moral theory.

Assuming that demanding and asking are different types of requestives, the study hypothesized (a) that they differ in their degrees and types of indirectness in request head acts (HAs) and internal and/or external supportive discourse moves (ISMs/ESMs), (b) that this is informed by people's ethnic mindsets, psychic delusions, and/or intentional attempts at negotiating social power, and (c) that any miscomputation of one's true social power may change a 'requestive' into a an act of verbal 'harassment' that can terminate interlocutors' relationships and connections. To test these hypotheses, 229 'hurting' requests collected through verbal recalls, written recalls, and online interviews were coded by two expert human coders using Blum-Kulka, Faerch and Kasper's (1989) coding scheme for HAs, and House and Kasper's (1981) and Faerch and Kasper's (1989) coding schemes for ISMs and ESMs. Results indicated that hearers and speakers differ in their computations of requestives based on their ethnic, linguistic, and psychological perceptions.

It is often claimed that all acts of supererogation involve sacrifice. The reason this claim is made is that it is thought that it is the level of sacrifice involved that prevents these acts from being morally required. In this paper, I will argue against this claim. I will start by making a distinction between two ways of understanding the claim that all acts of supererogation involve sacrifice. I will then examine some purported counter-examples to the view that supererogation always involves sacrifice and examine their limitation. Next, I will examine how this view might be defended, building on comments by Dale Dorsey and Henry Sidgwick. I will then argue that the view and the argument in favour of it should be rejected. I will finish by showing how an alternative explanation for the limits of moral obligation avoids the problems facing The Sacrifice View.

A widely held view concerning the justification of associative duties is the so-called relationships view, according to which associative duties within personal relationships arise because of the value of those relationships. Against this view, it has been argued that there can be cases of undemanding friendships, that is, genuine friendships with no associative duties. In this article, I argue that undemanding friendships do not show that associative duties are not grounded in the value of the relationship that gives rise to them by providing an interpretivist account of the normativity of friendships. I argue that friendships are complex values that need to be interpreted in order to determine which response to them would be appropriate, and that understanding one’s friendship as undemanding is one valid interpretation of the value of friendship. Subsequently, I demonstrate that this solution is not ad hoc, because friendship is not the only complex value that needs to be interpreted.

This paper reconstructs an Indian Buddhist response to the overdemandingness objection, the claim that a moral theory asks too much of its adherents. In the first section, I explain the objection and argue that some Mahāyāna Buddhists, including Śāntideva, face it. In the second section, I survey some possible ways of responding to the objection as a way of situating the Buddhist response alongside contemporary work. In the final section, I draw upon writing by Vasubandhu and Śāntideva in reconstructing a Mahāyāna response to the objection. An essential component of this response is the psychological transformation that the bodhisattva achieves as a result of realizing the nonexistence of the self. This allows him to radically identify his well-being with the well-being of others, thereby lessening the tension between self and others upon which the overdemandingness objection usually depends. Emphasizing the attention Mahāyāna authors pay to lessening moral demandingness in this way increases our appreciation of the philosophical sophistication of their moral thought and highlights an important strategy for responding to the overdemandingness objection that has been underdeveloped in contemporary work.

How much personal partiality do agent-centred prerogatives allow? If there are limits on what morality may demand of us, then how much does it permit? For a view Henry Shue has termed 'yuppie ethics', the answer to both questions is a great deal. It holds that rich people are morally permitted to spend large amounts of money on themselves, even when this means leaving those living in extreme poverty unaided. Against this view, I demonstrate that personal permissions are limited in certain ways: their strength must be continuous with the reasons put forward to explain their presence inside morality to begin with. Typically, these reasons include non-alienation and the preservation of personal integrity. However, when personal costs do not result in alienation or violate integrity, they are things that morality can routinely demand of us. Yuppie ethics therefore runs afoul of what I call the ‘continuity constraint’.

This is a draft chapter of a book I am working on now. In this paper I will seek to answer the following questions: Who bears these responsibilities for global justice? What these responsibilities require of those agents and how should they be distributed? Are the responsibilities implied by my account overly demanding on complying agents?

What does it mean to object to a moral theory, such as maximizing consequentialism, on the grounds that it is too demanding? It is apparently to say that its requirements are implausibly stringent. This suggests an obvious response: Modify the theory so that its requirements are no longer as stringent. A consequentialist may do this either by placing the requirement threshold below maximization – thereby arriving at satisficing consequentialism – or, more radically, by dispensing with deontological notions such as “requirement” altogether – thereby arriving at scalar consequentialism. Suppose, however, that a moral theory’s demandingness is not a matter of its requirements being stringent, but whether it entails that we have most reason, all things considered, to undertake burdensome actions. If this is the right account of demandingness – as I shall argue – then neither modification necessarily alleviates demandingness. We are led to the surprising conclusion that neither satisficing consequentialism nor scalar consequentialism is inherently less demanding than their more familiar maximizing counterpart. They are less demanding only when supplemented with ancillary, and controversial, assumptions.

How demanding is the virtuous life?  Can virtue exist alongside hints of vice?  Is it possible to be virtuous within a vicious society?  A line of thinking running through Diogenes and the Stoics is that even a hint of corruption is inimical to virtue, that participating in a vicious society makes it impossible for a person to be virtuous.  One response to this difficulty is to claim that virtue is a threshold concept, that context sets a threshold for what is considered virtuous.  On this way of thinking, what counts as virtuous in one society may be more demanding than what passes for virtuous in another.  This response seems plausible when considering that virtue-theoretic terms like `honest' are gradable adjectives.  Many gradable adjectives, like `long' and `expensive,' have contextual thresholds that shift depending on the situation, and so it is tenable that virtue-theoretic adjectives might function with contextual thresholds as well.  A major difficulty for this response, however, is that many virtue terms are absolute gradable adjectives, a variety of gradable adjectives that do not require a contextual threshold.  These absolute gradable adjectives instead draw their truth conditions from their maximal degree, suggesting that Diogenes and the Stoics were correct to think that a number of the virtues are incompatible with even a small degree of vice.

On what I take to be the standard account of supererogation, an act is supererogatory if and only if it is morally optional and there is more moral reason to perform it than to perform some permissible alternative. And, on this account, an agent has more moral reason to perform one act than to perform another if and only if she morally ought to prefer how things would be if she were to perform the one to how things would be if she were to perform the other. I argue that this account has two serious problems. The first, which I call the latitude problem, is that it has counterintuitive implications in cases where the duty to be exceeded is one that allows for significant latitude in how to comply with it. The second, which I call the transitivity problem, is that it runs afoul of the plausible idea that the one-reason-morally-justifies-acting-against-another relation is transitive. What's more, I argue that both problems can be overcome by an alternative account, which I call the maximalist account. The term 'supererogatory' is a technical term that one can use however one wants. But I'll use it such that an act counts as supererogatory if and only if, in performing it, the agent exceeds some morally required minimum. As such, my use of the term coincides with such colloquial expressions as 'going the extra mile', 'doing more than one has to', and, most illuminatingly, 'going beyond the call of duty'. 1 In this paper, I'll consider two competing accounts of supererogatory acts so conceived: the standard account and the maximalist account. I'll argue that the maximalist account is the more plausible of the two, because it avoids two serious problems associated with the standard account: the latitude problem and the transitivity problem. 1 On my conception, to perform a supererogatory act is to morally exceed the demands of morality—that is, to do something morally better than the minimum required by morality. Others conceive of supererogation differently. For instance, Dale Dorsey (2013) holds that to perform a supererogatory act is to morally exceed the demands of rationality—that is, to do something morally better than the minimum required by rationality. To illustrate the difference, suppose that morality demands that I give at least 10% of my surplus income to the poor, whereas rationality requires only that I give at least 5% of my surplus income to the poor. Assuming, then, that it is morally better to give 6% of one's surplus income to the poor than to give only 5%, giving 6% would count as supererogatory on Dorsey's conception but not on my own. Clearly, then, Dorsey and I are talking about different concepts even though we are using the same technical term to refer to them. And, of course, there's nothing wrong with using a technical term in whatever way one chooses. Nonetheless, I think that when ordinary people talk about going beyond the call of duty, they're talking about going beyond the call of moral duty, not going beyond the call of rational duty. For this and other criticisms of Dorsey's view, see Archer 2015b.

We are all, to some degree or other, self-centered; we tend to concentrate on our own needs and interests to the relative exclusion of most other people’s. This chapter explores the prospects for justifying such partiality on grounds of individual autonomy. Two versions of this approach are considered. The first develops the idea that, to be autonomous, an agent must have available a significant range of morally permissible options. This approach is rejected in favor of a second, according to which a strong duty of impartial beneficence would objectionably render an agent subject to the wills of other agents. That is, insofar as a person is entitled to a special authoritative status in relation to what she does, that person will bear the primary responsibility for how well her life goes. The chapter concludes by considering the implications for our understanding of morally required beneficence.

Affluent individuals are almost certainly subject to extensive redistributive ‘demand-side’ duties. Following Richard Arneson, I examine and dismiss three of the most common attempts to formulate ‘supply-side’ limits on redistributive obligations. I then propose and analyse a fourth ‘marginal beneficiary’ model, which limits moral demands by applying Golden Rule reasoning. Ultimately this approach also fails to convince, and we are left yet again with the unsatisfying conclusion of de facto unlimited redistributive duties.

Garrett Cullity contends that fairness is appropriate impartiality.  Cullity deploys his account of fairness as a means of limiting the extreme moral demand to make sacrifices in order to aid others that was posed by Peter Singer in his seminal article ‘Famine, Affluence and Morality’. My paper is founded upon the combination of the observation that the idea that fairness consists in appropriate impartiality is very vague and the fact that psychological studies show the self-serving bias is especially likely to infect one’s judgements when the ideas involved are vague. I argue that Cullity’s solution to extreme moral demandingness is threatened by these findings. I then comment on whether some other theories of fairness are vulnerable to the same objection.

Es ist ein verbreitetes Phänomen unserer moralischen Praxis, dass wir herausragende moralische Handlungen bisweilen als moralisch wertvoll und dennoch nicht als moralisch geboten beurteilen, d.i. als supererogatorisch. Im Zentrum der Studie steht die Frage, inwiefern die Kantische Ethik eine systematisch anschlussfähige Perspektive auf dieses Phänomen zu liefern vermag und das obwohl sie nicht über eine Kategorie der Supererogation verfügt.

Can morality be so demanding that we have reason not to follow its dictates? According to many, it can, if that morality is a consequentialist one. We take the plausibility and coherence of this objection – the Demandingness Objection – as a given and are also not concerned with finding the best response to the Objection. Instead, our main aim is to explicate the intuitive background of the Objection and to see how this background could be investigated. This double aim leads to different albeit connected threads of inquiry. We first outline the Objection, its different forms and how intuition figures in them. After this, we move on to consider the ongoing debate about the use of intuitions in (moral) philosophy with a focus on two challenges: what intuitions are and how we can detect them. To answer these challenges, we propose an account according to which moral intuitions are seemings that are characterized by being non-inferential, spontaneous, non-doxastic, phenomenologically distinctive, non-sensory, intrinsically motivating, and stable. Armed with these seven “markers” of moral intuition, we put a forward a complex experimental methodology and raise and respond to possible problems with it.

We argue that there is a problematic gap in Singer's influential and philosophically important argument for famine relief. Based on the analysis offered, we make the case that he makes a leap from what we should do morally to what we should do all things considered. As a result, his argument is subject to a trumping worry that is made worse by a broadness worry. The trumping worry is a worry about the inference that we should all things considered help relieve famine. The broadness worry is a worry that the scope of Singer's principle is so broad that the principle will practically almost always be activated. We show that the scope of Singer's principle is so broad that a defender of Singer's argument needs to support a move according to which, effectively, what we should do morally is what we should almost always do.

Supererogation seems to be an important concept of common sense morality. However, assuming the existence of such a category seems to pose a serious problem for Kantian Ethics, given the all-encompassing role of duty. In fact, Kant seems to deny the possibility of such acts when he states in the second critique that “[b]y exhortation to actions as noble, sublime, and magnanimous, minds are attuned to nothing but moral enthusiasm and exaggerated self-conceit; [...] they are led into the delusion that it is not duty […] which constitutes the determining ground of their actions […].” (KpV, AA V, 84f.) This paper’s aim is to show that even though it is not possible to include a category of supererogation within Kantian Ethics, the recognition of alleged supererogatory acts is not only a source of self-deception, as Kant seems to fear, but can also serve as a source of self-knowledge. Starting from the premise that within Kantian Ethics self-knowledge is indispensable to aspire to the duties of moral self-perfection, I will argue that supererogation is only a plausible concept regarding the observer-perspective: thus it describes an act that, given the observer's own moral development, seems to be beyond duty but for the agent herself is not. Given an observer has the insight that her judgment relies on her own deficiencies to act accordingly, this fulfills an epistemic function in the process of developing one’s own moral capacities. This seems to be a fairly proper phenomenological account of supererogation as it can, on the hand, explain the common moral intuition that certain acts are supererogatory. While on the other hand, it can capture the empirical observation that agents of alleged supererogatory acts usually do not perceive their actions as supererogatory because the differing perspectives of the agent and the observer constitute an integral part of the given account.

The paper deals with a charge that is often made against consequentialist moral theories: that they are overdemanding. I call this the Overdemandingness Objection. The first section introduces the Objection by outlining the several dimensions the notion of overdemandingness encompasses. These are three: scope, content, and authority. I then argue that neither the scope, nor the content-based understanding of the Objection is viable. Constraining the scope of consequentialism is neither helpful, nor justified, hence the pervasiveness of consequentialism cannot be the ground for the Objection. And though recent approaches interpret the Objection as a claim about the excessively demanding content of consequentialism, I argue that the stringency of consequentialism is also unproblematic insofar as demandingness is concerned. These results show that the only way to put the Objection is by focusing on the inescapability of consequentialism. However, it is difficult to see how this reading would fit the intuitive status of the Objection. Nor is it clear that consequentialism can indeed claim to be inescapable by appealing to the content of common sense morality. Finally, even if we set aside these problems, the fact that there is nothing in the nature of moral reasons that would make them override or silence non-moral reasons still discourages this reading of the Objection. I conclude that the case for authority is weak: although this is the only way to understand the Objection, it at best leads to an open ended inquiry concerning the strength and nature of moral reasons

In “The Wisdom of Oedipus and the Idea of a Moral Cosmos”, Raymond Geuss contrasts the non-moralised worldview of Ancient Greek tragedy with the attempt of philosophers to defend a moral cosmos, i. e. a wellordered, coherent moral world. Geuss calls this a “philosophy of good news” because it depicts the world as not indifferent to our moral concerns and efforts. Kant would be such a philosopher of good news, offering “perhaps the thinnest and most minimalistic version of the gospel”. The aim of this article is not mere criticism of Geuss’ interpretation of Kant, but a reflection on the demandingness of Kant’s conception of morality. I argue that Kant’s moral philosophy embraces a fundamental aspect of the tragic worldview: it does not rule out the possibility that moral requirements become extremely demanding. However, I argue that demandingness is not intrinsic to morality, but due to contingent aspects of the circumstances. Although Kant rules out collision between grounds of obl...

En un brevísimo artículo, James Sterba sostiene que existe un deber moral de sacrificar la propia vida para salvar la de terceros. Sterba fundamenta ese deber trazando una analogía con una serie de casos en los que común-mente se aceptaría algún grado de sacrificio en beneficio de terceros. En el presente trabajo, sostengo que el argumento formulado por Sterba llega a la conclusión correcta, pero es invalido. Asimismo, señalo dos argumentos diferentes que podrían utilizarse para fundamentar la existencia de un de-ber de sacrificar la propia vida para salvar la de terceros. Abstract In a very short article, James Sterba argues that there is a moral duty to sacrifice one's life to save the lives of others. Sterba justifies this duty by drawing an analogy with a series of cases in which some degree of sacrifice would be commonly accepted for the benefit of third parties. In this paper, I argue that Sterba's argument reaches the correct conclusion, but is invalid. In addition, I point out two different arguments to support the existence of a duty to sacrifice one's life to save the lives of others.

Consequentialism is often criticised as being overly demanding, and this overdemandingness is seen as sufficient to reject it as a moral theory. This paper takes the plausibility and coherence of this objection – the Demandingness Objection – as a given. Our question, therefore, is how to respond to the Objection. We put forward a response that we think has not received sufficient attention in the literature: institutional consequentialism. On this view institutions take over the consequentialist burden, whereas individuals, special occasions aside, are required to set up and maintain institutions. We first introduce the Objection, then explain the theory of institutional consequentialism and how it responds to the Objection. In the remainder of the paper, we defend the view against potential challenges.

Vom biblischen Gleichnis des barmherzigen Samariters über die Stilisierung von Figuren wie Mahatma Gandhi bis hin zur medialen Inszenierung von Spendengalas oder heldenhaften Rettungsaktionen – unsere Kultur- und Zeitgeschichte kennt viele Erzählungen von Personen, die anscheinend mehr tun, als moralisch geboten ist und denen dafür hohe Anerkennung zukommt. Aber auch im Alltag werden wir mit Handlungsweisen konfrontiert, die wir in besonderem Maße lobenswert finden, deren Unterlassung hingegen nicht tadelnswert; man denke etwa an besondere Freundlichkeit, Akte des Verzeihens oder auch ehrenamtliche Leistungen. Diese Phänomene scheinen – wenigstens in westlichen Kulturkreisen – einen wichtigen Teil der moralischen Erfahrungen auszumachen. Um unserer moralischen Praxis an dieser Stelle Rechnung zu tragen, wird oftmals so argumentiert, dass diese Phänomene eine eigenständige Handlungskategorie konstituierten, nämlich die der Supererogation. Unter supererogatorischen Handlungen werden dabei (grob gesagt) solche verstanden, die zwar moralisch gut, nicht jedoch moralisch geboten sind. Dabei ist auffällig, dass die Supererogationsdebatte (sieht man von den Debatten der angewandten Ethik ab) wie kaum eine andere in der Moralphilosophie durch die Erzählung von konkreten Fällen geprägt zu sein scheint, doch was sollen und was können diese in methodischer Hinsicht leisten und was nicht? Es wird zunächst gezeigt, dass diesen mindestens drei Funktionen zukommen: erstens dienen sie der Veranschaulichung und Etablierung des Forschungsgegenstandes; zweitens dienen sie als Bezugspunktes für bestimmte moralische Intuitionen und Praxen und somit gleichsam der intuitiven Unterstützung von (Nicht-)Existenzargumenten einer Kategorie der Supererogation; drittens dienen sie als Reflexionsmediums zur Untersuchung des Konzepts der Supererogation. Der Verweis auf konkrete Fälle unserer moralischen Praxis mag nun zweifelsohne Anlass dazu geben, sich mit den Phänomenen im Rahmen moralphilosophischer Überlegungen auseinanderzusetzen, jedoch ist er für sich betrachtet nicht hinreichend dafür, Supererogation als Handlungskategorie zu etablieren. Die eigentliche Leistungsfähigkeit, so die hier vertretene These, entwickeln die Erzählungen konkreter Fälle mit Blick auf ihren Beitrag zur Konzeptanalyse. Solche narrativen Theorieelemente lassen sich an dieser Stelle nicht ohne weiteres aussparen, da supererogatorische Handlungen am besten als Grenzsituationen des moralischen Handelns zu verstehen sind. Vermittelt über Erzählungen lässt sich daher erst ein umfassender Zugang zu den Phänomenen und insbesondere der Perspektive der Handelnden selbst erlangen.

Is it a good objection to a moral theory that it demands a great deal of individual agents? I argue that if we interpret the question to be about the potential welfare costs of associated with our moral obligations, the answer must be "no." However, the demands a moral theory makes can also be measured in terms of what it requires us to take responsibility for. I argue that this is distinct from what we may be required to do or give up, and that it provides a conception of demandingness that makes better sense of our intuitive reactions.

The thesis discusses the cost claims utilized by principles of beneficence within the consequentialist line. In other words, it dissects and tries to make sense of principles with the form “We ought to do X unless Y” where Y figures as a threshold for when the sacrifices and costs to the acting agent is usually regarded as too demanding. I stipulate what should be regarded as a cost to the agent based upon Elizabeth Cripps’ account of fundamental interests. I also argue that costs to the agent should not be counted iteratively but aggregately in a forward looking manner. These two features seem to justify two exemptions for the agent, what I call ‘moral investments’ and ‘moral vacations’. Lastly, I argue that certain objections from demandingness towards stronger principles of beneficence seem to lack a rationale and rests on a misconception of what these principles would actually require of us when applied.

Some theorists have attempted to reply to the demandingness objection by analyzing the moral requirements to respond to large-scale moral issues as collective duties rather than individual ones. On this view, the relationship between potentially overly demanding individual duties and large-scale moral issues is mediated by the fact that the duties are, first and foremost, ours together rather than each of ours on our own. In response to this strategy, this paper advances two reasons to believe that the interplay between collective duties and demandingness concerns is more complicated than has typically been appreciated. First, we argue that in cases in which risks and burdens are indivisible, the move to collectivize duties fails to fulfill its promise to alleviate demandingness concerns. Second, we argue that if concerns over individual demandingness could block a putative obligation from becoming an actual moral duty, then, in some cases at least, concerns over collective demandingness could do so as well.