Suberogation

Definition and Background

In moral philosophy, suberogation refers to a proposed category of actions that are morally permissible yet worse than what duty requires. The term is modeled on the more familiar notion of supererogation, which designates actions that are better than duty requires but still not obligatory. If supererogatory actions lie “above and beyond” obligation, suberogatory actions are thought to lie “below but not beneath” duty: they are inferior to the required course of action but not so defective as to be outright wrong.

Classical moral theorizing often assumes a tripartite classification of actions into:

1. Obligatory (required),
2. Permissible (allowed), and
3. Wrong (forbidden).

The introduction of supererogation already complicates this picture by adding a category of “better-than-required” permissibility. Suberogation pushes this complexity further by suggesting that there may also be “worse-than-required but still allowed” actions.

Relation to Duty, Supererogation, and Permission

Suberogation is most easily understood in relation to three key moral notions: duty, supererogation, and moral permission.

1. Duty versus Suberogation
   A duty specifies what an agent must do to avoid wrongdoing. On the suberogation view, there can be a range of permissible options, some of which fulfill the duty in a more admirable way than others. Suberogatory actions are:

   • Not violations of duty in the strict sense,
   • But morally worse than at least one available alternative that still meets the duty.

2. Supererogation and Suberogation as Duals

   • Supererogatory acts: better than duty, not required.
   • Suberogatory acts: worse than duty, not forbidden.

   Supererogation captures the idea that morality can praise agents for going beyond what is required. Suberogation suggests that morality can also criticize agents for falling short of an ideal without condemning them as having done something impermissible. Some philosophers treat the two notions as conceptual duals that reveal a richer moral landscape than duty alone.

3. Moral Permission and Its Structure
   Traditional views sometimes treat the permissible as a flat category: any non-wrong action is equally acceptable. Suberogation challenges that simplicity. It implies that within the sphere of the permissible there can be:

   • Merely permissible actions that fully realize one’s duties,
   • Supererogatory actions (above duty),
   • Suberogatory actions (below the best permissible standard, yet not prohibited).

   This has implications for grading moral evaluation: not all permissible actions are equally good, responsible, or admirable.

Motivations and Examples

Supporters of the concept of suberogation are often motivated by everyday moral judgments that seem to distinguish between different kinds of permissibility.

1. Interpersonal Consideration
   Suppose someone has promised to meet a friend for coffee. Several options might be open:

   • Go on time and be friendly.
   • Go but be noticeably cold and curt.
   • Not go at all without excuse.

   Many would judge:

   • Not going at all is wrong (a broken promise).
   • Going on time and being appropriately kind is clearly permissible and meets the duty.
   • Going but being emotionally distant might be seen as permissible but morally subpar—a suberogatory way of keeping one’s promise.

2. Charitable Giving
   Consider a person who meets their fair-share duty of charitable giving but:

   • Does so in a way that is grudging, publicized solely for praise, or deliberately insulting to recipients.

   The action of giving may remain permissible and even duty-fulfilling in a narrow sense, yet the manner of acting seems criticizable. Proponents claim that such behavior is suberogatory: worse than the morally decent way of fulfilling one’s duty, but not exactly prohibited by the core requirement to give.

3. Environmental or Social Choices
   When an agent chooses a course that:

   • Respects minimal legal and moral constraints,
   • But foreseeably causes avoidable mild harm, discomfort, or resentment to others,
   • And there is an obviously better, no-cost alternative,

   many people’s intuitions treat this as open to criticism while still acknowledging it as within the realm of what is allowed. Suberogation offers a label for such choices.

These examples suggest a motivation for the category: it seeks to capture the nuanced moral disapproval we often express toward actions that are not outright wrong but still “less than they should have been.”

Debates and Objections

Philosophical discussion of suberogation focuses on whether positing this category is conceptually coherent, normatively illuminating, or theoretically necessary.

1. Arguments in Favor

   • Finer-grained moral evaluation: Proponents argue that suberogation makes sense of common practices of mild blame, disappointment, or criticism directed toward actions that do not seem fully wrong.
   • Symmetry with supererogation: If morality recognizes above-duty options that are optional, consistency may encourage recognizing below-duty but still permissible options as well.
   • Social practices of blame and guidance: The idea of suberogation helps explain why we sometimes say “You didn’t do anything wrong, but you could have done better” in a way that feels morally substantive, not merely aesthetic.

2. Objections and Skepticism

   • Collapse into wrongness: Critics contend that if an action is morally worse than one’s duty, then it just is a failure to comply with duty and thus wrong. On this view, any action that is sufficiently bad to merit moral criticism should be classified as wrong, not as a special sub-category of the permissible.
   • Redundancy: Some argue that we can explain the relevant phenomena using existing notions, such as:
     • Imperfect duties,
     • Virtue and vice,
     • Reasons that are outweighed but still present, without introducing a distinct category of suberogatory acts.
   • Conceptual vagueness: There is debate over how to draw the line between suberogatory and wrong actions. If the distinction depends entirely on degree of badness or blameworthiness, some worry it is not a stable or principled category.

3. Relation to Blame and Responsibility The status of suberogatory acts impacts how philosophers think about moral blame:

   • Some hold that if an act is genuinely permissible, it should be immune to blame; hence, admitting suberogation would blur the traditional connection between wrongdoing and blameworthiness.
   • Others maintain a more graded picture of responsibility, where some permissible acts can still attract partial or mild blame, and suberogation marks this terrain.

4. Implications for Moral Theory The acceptance or rejection of suberogation has implications for:

   • Consequentialism, which often treats right/wrong in terms of best outcomes but also recognizes scalar better-and-worse evaluations.
   • Deontology, where the distinction between fulfilling and violating duty is central, and suberogation raises questions about how precisely duties are specified.
   • Virtue ethics, which naturally allows for gradations of character and action; suberogation may be seen as capturing actions that are compatible with minimal virtue yet fall short of full virtue.

Overall, the notion of suberogation remains a contested but illuminating tool in contemporary ethical theory. It invites reflection on how fine-grained our moral classifications should be and whether the domain of the permissible is morally flat or internally structured by better and worse ways of acting.