- Title
- Against supererogationism
- Creator
- Van Niekerk, Jason Bradley
- Subject
- Supererogation
- Subject
- Supererogation -- History
- Subject
- Values
- Subject
- Ethics -- History
- Date Issued
- 2006
- Date
- 2006
- Type
- Thesis
- Type
- Masters
- Type
- MA
- Identifier
- vital:2731
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004268
- Identifier
- Supererogation
- Identifier
- Supererogation -- History
- Identifier
- Values
- Identifier
- Ethics -- History
- Description
- In this thesis, I argue that we have no reason to accept the existence of a category of supererogatory moral goods: that is, good acts that carry no pressure to bring them about. Despite the counterintuitive nature and suspicious provenance of the concept, Supererogationism is the orthodoxy in Ethics, and I examine promising but unsuccessful responses to it by Peter Singer and Kwame Gyekye. Responding in particular to David Heyd's Supererogationism - but also to J. O. Urmson, Susan Wolf, and Jonathan Dancy - I develop an account of the principle "Good implies Ought" that does not entail absurd over-obligation. I argue that this Anti-Supererogationist model stands up to the four strongest arguments against such a position, and that it embraces a more accurate account of the relation between values and oughts than Supererogationists are capable of supplying. Finally, I sketch a detailed eudaimonist account of the principle umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu - that our commitment to the good of others stems from our flourishing being caught up with theirs.
- Format
- 100 leaves
- Format
- Publisher
- Rhodes University
- Publisher
- Faculty of Humanities, Philosophy
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Van Niekerk, Jason Bradley
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