Virtuosity Beyond the Call of Duty: A Reply to David Heyd

Abstract

In response to David Heyd’s article concerning supererogatory actions, I will attempt to make sense of the notion that there are degrees of goodness by proposing the foundations of a theory of the good which incorporates both duty-based and virtue-based understandings of ethics. Drawing from moral philosophy as well as Christian moral theology, I will argue that a deontological framework establishes the criteria for moral decency while a virtue-based framework establishes the criteria for moral goodness. Hence, while supererogation does indeed become redundant in a strictly virtue-based paradigm of ethics, insofar as supererogatory acts would be virtuous acts on such an account, a virtue ethics concerned primarily with the good can still make room for a pragmatically inspired deontological system to be enacted as a means of managing the behaviors of all of those persons who are less than virtuous. In Christian ethics, this implies that the divine moral laws are not “right” because they are divinely commanded, as some theorists may suggest, but rather because they are the best instruments that persons can use to become good or cultivate goodness in their lifetime; they are the best tools we have on the path toward becoming Godlike or Christlike. On this interpretation, Christian ethics is not a form of divine command theory but is rather a virtue ethics that also encompasses a pragmatically and pedagogically valuable deontology within its moral purview.