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Abstract
It is commonly believed that we need not always do, morally speaking, our very best. There are acts, the supererogatory, that involve going beyond our obligations. For example, while it is morally preferable to donate to UNICEF, we are often permitted to, say, buy new shoes instead. The idea that a great many acts are supererogatory is deeply intuitive, but this raises a serious problem for theories of moral reasoning. Since the supererogatory act is better than its omission, a moral agent will have more (and often much more) moral reason to perform the supererogatory act than to omit it. The donation to UNICEF, for instance, could potentially save lives or greatly reduce suffering. By comparison, any moral reasons that favor buying the new shoes seem quite weak. But then why is it not a moral failing to do what we have no (or very little) moral reason to do rather than what we have very strong moral reason to do?
Philosophers have typically approached this question by looking at the reasons for and against performing the supererogatory act. I argue that these accounts will not work, and I defend a different approach. I argue that an act's deontic status can also be impacted by the reasons that we have to hold the agent accountable for performing the act. I argue that there is a conceptual connection between obligation and accountability and that one can have conclusive reason to perform an act without there being conclusive reason to hold her accountable for its performance. A conclusive ought may then fail to generate a requirement, or an obligation. It is in this space that the supererogatory resides. I also argue that the intuitions that underlie our moral concept of supererogation have non-moral analogues. A virtue of my account is that it can be used to account for non-moral supererogation as well.
