Intro to Ethics - Moral Saints (Wolf)

What is a moral saint? What is Wolf’s thesis, and what follows for moral theory if she is right? 

• A moral saint is a person whose every action is as morally good as possible.  

• Wolf’s thesis is that moral sainthood is not a model of personal well-being we should strive for.  

• If she’s right, we must either change our moral theories or change what it means to affirm a moral theory. 

What is the difference between the Loving Saint and the Rational Saint? What do they have in common? 

• The Loving Saint is a saint out of love. Helping others replaces the selfish concerns most of us have, so his happiness lies in others’ happiness. The Rational Saint is a saint out of duty. He has ordinary desires like ours but overrides them for others’ interests, and he feels the sacrifice.  

• Both have lives dominated by a commitment to improving others’ welfare. 

What does Wolf mean by saying the saint has the standard moral virtues to a nonstandard degree? 

The saint must have the usual moral virtues (patient, considerate, even-tempered, charitable, fair) but to an extreme degree. He is very reluctant to judge others negatively and doesn’t favor people for traits they can’t help. This is what makes him so unusually good. 

What gets crowded out of the saint’s life? Distinguish goods there is merely no time for from goods that positively clash with the moral virtues. Be able to give an example of each 

• Some goods there is merely no time for, like reading Victorian novels, playing the oboe, or improving a tennis backhand, because the saint is busy helping others.  

• Other goods positively clash with the moral virtues.  

• A cynical or sarcastic wit “goes against the moral grain,” so the saint can’t enjoy the Marx Brothers. Gourmet cooking also clashes, since its resources could go to helping others. 

What is the objection that this is just a worry about focusing on any single domain? What is Wolf’s reply? Why is morality the disturbing case? 

• The objection says the same worry would apply to any one-sided life, such as an “aesthetic saint” or an Olympic swimmer.  

• Wolf replies that the desire to be morally perfect is different: it doesn’t just compete with other desires but subsumes or demotes them, so it works as an imperative, not a choice.  

• Morality is the disturbing case because it seems to require the lack or denial of an identifiable personal self. 

Does the utilitarian escape the worry? What is the problem with valuing one’s other interests only as contributions to happiness - “one thought too many”? 

No, the utilitarian doesn’t really escape. The individual utilitarian is still committed to bringing about the most good, which summons the saint. If he values his other interests only as contributions to happiness (reading because it adds happiness, not because the book is beautiful), that is “one thought too many.” It means his interests are kept “on a leash” and can’t be loved for their own sake. 

How do Kantian accounts fare? Distinguish the side-constraints reading from the unlimited benevolence reading. 

• On the side-constraints reading, morality is a limited set of rules not to break, so you are morally perfect just by obeying them, and there’s no saint. But then Kantian theory doesn’t give an ideal of a person with the fullness of a saint.  

• On the unlimited benevolence reading, the duty to help others has no ceiling, so it can take over a whole life and we get a Kantian saint after all, with the same worries returning. 

What is the cost of putting an upper bound on how moral one can be? 

Putting a cap on how moral we can be would mean that helping beyond a set point isn’t morally better, only optional. Wolf says that is perverse, because a real saint would be remarkably noble and admirable. Any cap would also look arbitrary. 

What are the moral point of view and the point of view of individual perfection? Why does Wolf think any plausible theory needs a conception of supererogation? 

• The moral point of view asks how much good a life does and judges it by moral standards (such as fairness and impartiality). The point of view of individual perfection asks whether this is a good life to live, weighing everything that makes a life go well.  

• Wolf thinks a plausible moral theory needs supererogation (good acts beyond duty that stay optional), because even from the moral point of view we have reason not to want people to be morally perfect. 

What does Wolf conclude about the relation between moral ideals and personal ideals? 

Wolf concludes that moral ideals don’t make the best personal ideals: the most moral life is not the best life. There is always more good we could do, but we have sound, not particularly selfish reasons not to devote our whole lives to it. So affirming a moral theory means accepting it as the right account of what is morally good, while other values can sometimes win, not signing up to obey it perfectly.