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Moral Saints
Susan Wolf
Two kinds of Moral Saints
• The Rational Saint
– Is committed to doing
their moral duty
– Is the perfect Kantian
• The Loving Saint
– Devotes their entire lives
to maximizing
everyone’s well-being
– Is the perfect Utilitarian
The desirability of moral saints:
• Though we would certainly praise each of
these persons for their moral commitments,
we would not necessarily want them as
friends, nor would we want out loved ones to
be moral saints.
The undesirability of moral saints
• The undesirability of moral saints is chiefly in
that they cannot develop in themselves a
variety of non-moral virtues and social
interests (e.g. working on the backhand,
enjoying a Marx Brothers film, discussing
music) because they are all-consumed with
morality.
Singularity of Focus
• It may be that ANY singular focus at the
expense of all other aspects of life, and that
might include morality.
• Consider someone who devotes all of their
time and energy to, say, pole-vaulting. We
might admire how good they are at pole
vaulting, but few of us would chose their life
for us or our loved ones.
Supererogation
• Whatever other lessons that the undesirability
of moral saints may hold, one of them is that
our theories of morality must make a better
account of the supererogatory.
• Supererogatory acts are acts that go “above
and beyond” the call of moral duty.
Amorality
• Additionally, the undesirability of moral saints
indicates that our moral theories must also
make a better account of what is amoral.
• The amoral is that in life that morality has
nothing to say about one way or another.
Virtuous Saints
• One possibility for addressing Wolf’s concerns
is a more thorough examination of virtue
ethics.
• It seems that a virtuous saint would be wellrounded enough to be not only acceptable,
but exemplary for human behavior.