Offence and Virtue Ethics

Abstract

In his 1963 essay ‘Supererogation and Offence: A Conceptual Scheme for Ethics,’ Roderick Chisholm describes a category of human acts which he calls ‘offences’: A system of moral concepts which provides a place for what is good but not obligatory, should also provide a place for what is bad but not forbidden. For if there is such a thing as “non-obligatory well-doing” then it is plausible to suppose that there is also such a thing as “permissive ill-doing.” There is no term in moral literature, so far as I know, which has been used to designate just this latter class of actions; I shall refer to them as “offences.” Some recognize the possibility of acts, commonly called acts of supererogation, which are morally good or praiseworthy but not obligatory to perform. In this passage, as well as in a later article co-authored with Ernest Sosa, Chisholm calls attention to the possibility of acts which are morally bad or blameworthy to perform, but whose performance is nevertheless not forbidden.

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