Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
Can an action cease to be required of a moral agent solely because it comes too costly? Can self-sacrifice or risk of self-sacrifice serve as a limit on our moral obligations? Two recent articles in Philosophy, concerned primarily with the possibility of supererogatory action, suggest very different answers to these questions.
1 Pybus, Elizabeth M., ‘Saints and Heroes’, Philosophy 57, No. 220 (1982), 193–199.Google Scholar
2 McGoldrick, Patricia M., ‘Saints and Heroes: A Plea for the Supererogatory’, Philosophy 59, No. 230 (1984), 523–528.Google Scholar
3 Pybus, , ‘Saints and Heroes’, 194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Ibid., 197.
5 Ibid., 199.
6 McGoldrick, ‘Saints and Heroes: A Plea for the Supererogatory’, 517.
7 Ibid., 526.
8 Ibid., 524.
9 A more detailed account of the effect of high cost on moral obligation can be found in Jacobs, Russell A., ‘The Price of Duty’, Southern Journal of Philosophy XVII, No. 4 (1979), 443–454.Google Scholar