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Saints and heroes

February 8, 2011

Posted by Ezra Resnick in Ethics, Philosophy.

Tags: Elizabeth Pybus, J. O. Urmson
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Is it possible for an action to be morally good but not morally obligatory? In other words, is there such
a thing (in ethics) as going beyond the call of duty?

In his 1958 paper Saints and Heroes, philosopher J. O. Urmson

brings the example of a doctor who volunteers to join the depleted medical forces in a plague-stricken
city (whom we would call a saint), or a soldier who throws himself on a grenade in order to save his
comrades (whom we would call a hero). Such actions are considered morally worthy, but are they
obligatory? Urmson maintains that while moral obligations can be extracted from a man like a debt,
we could not say that a doctor who didnt volunteer for a plague-stricken city, or a soldier who didnt
throw himself on a grenade, has failed in his duty; and no one could ever tell someone else he ought to
do such a deed. Therefore, ethical systems must allow for actions that are morally praiseworthy but
optional.
Urmson thinks it is essential to distinguish, in principle, between those minimum requirements
necessary for us to live together in a society (like keeping promises and refraining from stealing)
which may be grounded in self-interest, or a desire to avoid the worst possible outcome for everyone
and actions inspired by a positive ideal. He offers an analogy to membership in a club: the club rules
are basic requirements that are a condition of membership, but there is an important distinction

between those members who merely follow the rules, and those who go beyond the call of duty and
contribute to the club by doing things that are not (and could not be) demanded in the rules.
According to Urmson, moral obligations must conform to restrictions similar to those we would place
on a legal system: moral duties must be within the capacity of the ordinary man, and must be
formulable in rules of manageable complexity. Passing a law which most people are incapable of
obeying merely serves to weaken the general respect for the law (as was the case with the prohibition
of alcohol in the Unites States in the early twentieth century); and the ordinary man must be able to
understand and apply the laws on his own precluding laws that require complex judgment calls (i.e.,
that do not concern behavior which is almost invariably good or bad). These considerations would
seem to bolster Urmsons argument that saintly and heroic acts cannot be considered moral
obligations.
Elizabeth Pybus, however, rejects the analogy between moral duty and legal systems. She argues that
the set of obligations we have as moral agents as people is not readily codifiable as a list of
simple rules. For example, even relatively absolute moral precepts, like keeping promises and avoiding
murder, clearly admit of contextual exceptions that may require nontrivial judgment calls like not
returning a borrowed weapon to someone who intends to misuse it, or killing a robber who threatens to
shoot a hostage.
Moreover, why should our determination of what is morally right be dependent on how difficult it may
be for some people to do it? Pybus maintains that any moral commendation of an action (including the
heroic and the saintly) commits us to the view that others ought to do the same in similar
circumstances, and that those who do not should be regarded as falling short of the moral ideal.
Contrary to Urmsons assumption, however, it does not follow that we must always go around
demanding that other people perform such actions just as we do not do so for some of Urmsons
basic rules, like honesty (though we may still be silently judgmental).
Pybus argues that morality is not a set of socially or legally imposed rules, but a realization of
attainable values that we ought to strive for. Morality is a matter of evaluation and action
intertwined, where our moral evaluations commit us to actions, and our moral actions are an attempt
to bring about what we regard as worthwhile. If saints and heroes have done something morally good,
then we all ought to be like them.
This does not mean that everyone must do exactly what they have done. It is not necessary (or
desirable) for all soldiers to throw themselves on grenades or for all doctors to go to plague-ridden
cities, and most of us will never find ourselves facing those specific dilemmas anyway. But if we think
that certain acts of self-endangerment or self-sacrifice are good, we must believe that we too ought to

perform self-endangering or self-sacrificing actions, in whatever way is appropriate to our own

circumstances. Different things are difficult for different people. By praising saints and heroes, we are
actually praising certain dispositions or virtues having the courage to do what is morally necessary.
And that is required of everyone: someone who goes through life fulfilling only the most basic moral
requirements can be faulted. Keeping the basic rules is not enough.
Still, it might seem that an ethical system where every morally worthy deed is obligatory is somehow
impoverished. Urmson fears that under such a system, the value of peoples most charitable and
courageous acts is diminished, since they are reduced to mere fulfillment of demands. While we have
no choice but to force compliance with the basic rules, free choice is generally better than constraint. It
would be preferable for goodness to be encouraged rather than demanded, so that virtuous acts are
done for their own sake and not from a desire to avoid condemnation.
But this concern seems misplaced. Performing an action that you deem to be morally obligatory does
not amount to doing it because others demand it presumably, you consider the action obligatory
because you recognize its value. (And as previously mentioned, judging an action to be a moral duty
does not necessarily require public condemnation of those who dont do it.) Pybus argues that in
distinguishing between a morality of duty and a higher morality of aspiration, Urmson unnecessarily
lowers the concept of duty, while putting his ideals outside morality altogether: I cannot at the same
time say that something is a moral ideal, and feel that I have no sort of obligation to pursue it. Moral
commendation of an act implies that it exemplifies a morally worthwhile ideal; in which case it follows
that we all ought to act in pursuit of that ideal.
So it seems to me that all morally relevant actions fall on a single continuum: there is no principled
distinction between basic duties and the actions of heroes and saints, since they all derive their value
from the same standard. We can still give special praise to those individuals who managed to do the
right thing in especially difficult circumstances where many others might not have; but in doing so, we
are recognizing that those saints and heroes have succeeded in being what we all ought to be.

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