Abstract
It is commonly held that in addition to the deontic categories of The Forbidden, The Indifferent and The Obligatory we must also make room for The Supererogatory. Some philosophers argue that we must go further and make room for an additional category of Offence or Suberogation. Gregory Mellema has argued that even this does not go far enough and we must also make room for the categories of Quasi-Supererogation and Quasi-Offence. According to Mellema, in the absence of these categories we will be unable to accommodate the possibility of optional acts that are praiseworthy to perform and blameworthy to omit. In this paper I will argue that Mellema’s defence of this claim is unsuccessful. What his arguments instead show is that it can sometimes be blameworthy to omit an act of supererogation and praiseworthy to omit an offence.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 341-351 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Journal of Value Inquiry |
Volume | 50 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 15 Jun 2016 |