Julio Andrade

This chapter turns to the figure of the whistleblower in order to illustrate how certain features of Levinasian normativity might find practical application. The chapter traces the origin of whistleblowing to the conflicting loyalties the whistleblower faces—to an organisation that must be given the opportunity to correct its wrongdoing; or to a society which will be harmed by such wrongdoing and has no way to discover such wrongdoing. The chapter follows Andrade who argues that the whistleblower should be understood as the ethical, and flexible boundary of the organisation, which requires that who qualifies as a recipient of a disclosure of wrongdoing remain flexible (2015). It is then shown how the flexibility of organisational boundaries illustrate the provisionality of Levinasian normativity. On this reading, the whistleblower is better understood as the ethico-politico boundary of the organisation. The retaliation that the whistleblower suffers as a result of their disclosure also demonstrates that, like the (im)possible sacrifice of the provisional saint and hero, the whistleblower’s sacrifice also amounts to an (im)possible sacrifice. I then turn to a reading of Alford’s (2007) paper on whistleblower narratives to argue that ‘choice-less choice’ and ‘narratives stuck in static time’ illustrate a whistleblowing subjectivity that already reveals an affirmation of a supererogatory attitude. The autonomy of undecidability, I argue, makes better sense of whistleblowing autonomy understood as choiceless choice, while the recursive oscillation of Levinasian normativity offers a way to escape the prison of static time.

This chapter reconceptualises supererogation as the diachronic movement of Levinasian normativity. More specifically, supererogation is described as the ethical attitude which recursively imagines the alterity of the Other as an infinite series of re/presentations of that alterity in order to navigate the undecidability of the ethical and political responses to those re/presentations, so that infinite responsibility to and for the Other can be limited and then restored back again. This is, and can only be, a provisional formulation—a formulation that operates as if it were a definitive formulation of supererogation. I then reformulate this provisional formulation to argue that supererogation as Levinasian normativity can also be understood as the (im)possibility of sacrifice, and concomitantly, the provisionality of saintliness and heroism. I also claim that a major result of this reconceptualisation of supererogation is that it dissolves the perspectival problem of supererogation. However, the recursivity of Levinasian normativity, and the autonomy of undecidability that marks it, means that the problem of supererogation reconstitutes itself. In light of these findings, the problems of moral demandingness raised by moral iteration and moral aggregation together with the duties to rescue and duties of justice, are revisited and found to constitute a false dichotomy. The chapter concludes by considering several objections to supererogation reconceptualised as a Levinasian normativity and manifesting as a supererogatory attitude. I dismiss the claim that Levinasian normativity makes the concept of supererogation redundant and argue that the term ‘supererogation’ should be retained as a reminder of the undecidability that demarcating the limits of a morally-demanding infinite responsibility encompasses.

I have argued that the failure of Kantianism and utilitarianism to solve the problems of supererogation in particular and moral-demandingness in general, arise on account of their impartialism. I now claim that moral enquiry within the analytic tradition proceeds chiefly along impartialist lines. This chapter argues that because continental philosophy does not rely on impartialism to support its claims about morality, and is more sensitive to situational, contextual and relational contingencies which allow the personal to play a more prominent and determinative role, it is better positioned to address the problem of moral-demandingness and offer a reconceptualisation of supererogation. This chapter is a segue between the argument presented in part one of this study—broadly representative of the analytic tradition—to the argument presented in Part II—broadly representative of the continental tradition. I explore some of the salient differences between the two traditions and then trace one paradigm of a methodology operative in continental philosophy—‘the possibility of impossibility’. This Derridean-inspired paradigm purports to demonstrate the paradoxes and limits of establishing the conditions for the meaning and application of certain philosophical concepts and language. Derrida’s idea of the undecidable decision is introduced as a way to elaborate on these (im)possible concepts. I then make the case that Emmanuel Levinas is the most well-suited continental philosopher to approach supererogation and moral-demandingness because his notion of infinite responsibility is a radical reinscription of moral-demandingness which attempts to dissolve all ethical boundaries, including the purportedly boundary between obligatory and supererogatory actions. I conclude by offering a short preview of my methodology in part two of the study: a Levinasian reinscription of certain concepts that featured in the first half of the study’s attempts to conceptualise supererogation—these being proximity, asymmetry and autonomy.

This chapter commences with a basic definition of supererogatory acts as moral acts that go beyond duty which are praiseworthy when performed, but not blameworthy when not. I then map various definitions of supererogation in the literature and point out salient overlaps and divergences. I take J. O. Urmson’s paper ‘Saints and Heroes,’ in which he calls for an additional class of moral actions beyond the tripartite deontic schema of obligatory, non-obligatory and permissible actions, as my starting point. I then use his later position which insists on the agents’ sacrifice as a necessary requirement for supererogation to introduce ‘appeal to cost’ approaches within supererogation. These approaches have it that because supererogatory actions cost the agent a great deal they should be at the discretion of the agent. However, supererogation is marked by an asymmetry between the observer and actor who may characterise the same action differently—the agent may regard performing a purportedly supererogatory act as just their duty. This asymmetry leads to the perspectival problem of supererogation and complicates the notion of moral autonomy. I then situate the problem of supererogation within the wider concern of moral-demandingness. I show that problematic overdemanding morality, which by turns is unpacked as ‘overweening morality’ and, following Susan Wolf, ‘saintly morality’, is a direct consequence of impartialism—a feature of certain moral theories which require the agent to detach themselves from their personal projects and special relationships when making moral decisions. I find that impartialism constrains the autonomy of the agent to decide whether certain acts are too morally-demanding, and as such should be regarded as supererogatory acts.

This chapter examines, and builds on, Levinas’s move from ethics to politics which is inaugurated by the third party to the face-to-face encounter. The third party limits the infinite responsibility of the self by reintroducing themes and categories which ensure justice between incomparable equals and acts as the incessant correction of the asymmetry of proximity. This incessant correction operates as the diachrony between the Saying and the Said. This movement can also be described as the recursive oscillation between the undecidability of ethics and politics. Following this, the autonomy of the self restored by the third is described as an autonomy of undecidability. The chapter then builds on this conception to construct a Levinasian normativity—a normativity without norms—a meta-ethical position which delineates the conditions any purported norm must satisfy. These norms must satisfy the imperative of provisionality, that is, they must be subject to an infinite revision. Provisional norms operate quasi-transcendentally: we follow them as if they had universal and immutable force. I then argue that Levinasian normativity is the recursive oscillation between ethics and politics, which operates in a quasi-transcendental manner in order to traverse the undecidability this oscillation produces. As such, Levinasian normativity incessantly limits and restores the infinite responsibility of the self to and for the Other. Concomitantly, the autonomy of the self under Levinasian normativity operates under an autonomy of undecidability that tracks these recursive oscillations. I also argue that if infinity can be approached through a series of infinite re/presentations instead of a re/presentation of the infinite, then the recursive modality of Levinasian normativity can also be grasped as series of infinite re/presentations that, in being incessantly corrected, achieve a greater fidelity to the representation of the alterity of the Other.

This chapter interrogates how Kantianism and utilitarianism propose to deal with the challenge supererogation presents. In order to facilitate this examination, Heyd’s description of this challenge as the twofold problem of supererogation—the meta-ethical and normative problems—is turned to. The meta-ethical problem arises because non-deontological moral theories such as utilitarianism are not based on duty, and so speaking of acts beyond duty becomes meaningless; while in deontological theories such as Kantianism, there is no space for supererogatory acts because they are not obligatory. The normative problem concerns the scope and limits of duty. Kantianism and utilitarianism attempt to assimilate supererogation by a two-fold strategy that broadly maps onto the meta-ethical and normative problems—a reduction of the supererogatory to the obligatory, and an extension of the limits of duty. I approach the former by examining Kant’s distinction between perfect and imperfect duties. I argue that this distinction fails to reduce the supererogatory to the obligatory. I approach strategies to extend the scope of duty through a critical analysis of the life-saving analogy (LSA) Peter Singer presents in his 1972 essay ‘Famine, Affluence and Morality’. I argue that this strategy fails because the principle underpinning the analogy—what I call the ‘sacrifice principle’—is not an a-theoretical principle as Singer claims, but a utilitarian principle. This is problematic because the findings from the previous chapter show that utilitarianism is an impartial moral theory, and impartialism is too morally-demanding on the agent. I conclude that neither Kantianism, nor utilitarianism, can satisfactorily assimilate supererogation, because both are impartial moral theories. The challenges that supererogation presents to moral theory in general, and to moral autonomy in particular remain as a result of this finding.

This concluding chapter revisits the turn to continental philosophy in general, and Levinas in particular, as a means to solve the problems of supererogation and moral-demandingness. In light of my exegesis of a Levinasian ethics and subsequent construction of Levinasian normativity, I elaborate on my argument that analytic moral philosophy fails to solve these problems because of its impartialism, an impartialism rooted in a rationality which excludes affectivity and sensibility. This unfolds in two parts; first, through narrowing Levinas’s use of skepticism and its refutation into a discussion of moral skepticism, using Peter Singer as interlocutor and exemplar of the analytic tradition’s impartialism; second, by emphasising how the subject of Levinasian normativity, as an ethico-politico subject, can address the political dimensions of supererogation and moral-demandingness which the analytic tradition struggles with.

This chapter reinscribes the problems of supererogation and moral-demandingness conceptualised in the first half of the study from within an analytic moral philosophy, into the terminology of a Levinasian ethics. The scope of Levinas’s project is examined by way of explicating the concepts of ‘totality’ and ‘infinity’ that comprise the title of Levinas’s first major work. Totalisation operates to reduce the alterity of the Other, while the idea of infinity serves as a model for how the alterity of the Other might be represented in this totality of knowledge. A Levinasian ethics is then adumbrated chiefly through the figure of the face which delineates this mode of the Other’s representation. I use the shorthand epiphanic re/presentation to describe the sensibility, rather than the appearance of the face. The face signifies the alterity of the Other in discourse, which Levinas argues, amounts to a type of attitude of the self toward the Other. I then explicate the Levinasian term ‘proximity’ which describes the relationship between the self and the Other in the face-to-face encounter which cannot be expressed in themes or categories. I contrast this metaphysical notion of proximity with the problems of physical and psycho-social distance found in the LSA (life-saving analogy) which I call ontological proximity. Thereafter, I explore the asymmetrical relationship between the Other and the self in the face-to-face encounter which results in an infinite responsibility to and for the Other. I compare this asymmetry with the asymmetry of supererogation, which is contained in the perspectival problem of supererogation. I also offer insights into what can be regarded as a Levinasian methodology—a method of exasperation—which relies on hyperbolic and extreme formulas to make the case that the self is responsible even for the Other’s responsibility. The chapter concludes by outlining Levinas’s innovation of the Saying and the Said, which attempts to demonstrate how the ethical demand of the Other can described in language which is always interrupted by the singularity of that demand.

This chapter follows the idea that supererogation is better understood as a type of ethical attitude. To that end, I offer several examples of purportedly supererogatory attitudes, including the example of forgiveness. I return to the perspectival problem of supererogation and the case of reluctant heroes and saints in order to deepen the examination of the imbrication of autonomy and supererogation. I trace Bernard Williams’s notion of a moral incapacity in the purported supererogator’s description of their actions as something they had to do. I draw the conclusion that moral incapacities demonstrate that autonomy can be bracketed in the project to conceptualise supererogation. I also claim that moral incapacities reveal a certain type of ethical attitude that can form the basis of reconceptualised supererogation. I argue that such an attitude manifests in, what Craig Taylor calls, a ‘primitive moral responsiveness’—a responsiveness which is an immediate and unthinking response to the suffering of another. However, because this response is the result of a recognition of the other’s suffering as like my own, these responses slip back into a deliberative response which undermines itself. This is made evident in contrasting Taylor’s understanding of sympathy as a paradigmatic primitive moral response with empathy. I focus on the imaginative aspect of empathy to argue for an understanding of empathetic imagination as a non-deliberative and affective response to another person which emerges out of a particular moral relationship with another. This is undertaken in order to ameliorate what I take as problematic in Taylor’s account, so that primitive moral responsiveness can still serve as the foundation for a reconceptualisation of supererogation as a type of ethical attitude.

This introductory chapter outlines the aims and scope of the study. The current study attempts to solve the problems of supererogation in particular, and moral-demandingness more broadly, which it is argued, can be attributed to impartialist moral theories. I claim that impartialist moral theories are typical of the analytic tradition in philosophy. I will argue that the continental tradition offers moral concepts and resources not found in the analytic tradition which are better suited to addressing the problems of supererogation and moral-demandingness. In particular, I will argue that the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas is the most well-placed to address these problems because he radicalises what morality can demand of us. On Levinas’s account, all morality becomes supererogatory, because we have a (morally-demanding) infinite responsibility to, and for the other person. The turn to the continental tradition in general, and Levinas in particular, will require the use of two very different ethical vocabularies. The study is structured in two parts; in the first half the problems of supererogation and moral demandingness, and the purported solutions to these problems, are presented from within the analytic tradition, while in the second half, this is done from within the continental tradition.

This article arises in the Ecuadorian context of Higher Education where the insertion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has a considerable impact on the knowledge and attitudes of students. The purpose of the research is to analyze the integration of ICT in attitudes and knowledge in students of the Bolivar State University in the careers of Accounting and Business Administration. The methodology used in a sample of 150 students presents a quantitative research design, exploratory type, correlational scope and cross-sectional; in addition, an exploratory factor analysis, KMO sample adequacy and Bartlett’s test were used, central trend and dispersion measures, Pearson’s correlation. The results show that, despite the direct relationship between the variables, there are no statistically significant differences between knowledge and attitude, that is, the perception and understanding of ICTs between the two cohorts of students are similar. It is concluded that students have an average level of knowledge about ICT and their attitude to the use of them is indifferent.

My starting point in this article is that investigating the ethics of autonomous vehicles through the lens of the trolley problem is not only limited but also unethical. I construct my case by aligning myself with Niklas Toivakainen, who argues against David Gunkel’s reading of Levinasian ethics as an answer to the “Machine Question”. I adumbrate Toivakainen’s critique that the attempt to give a Levinasian face to the machine is an example of a compensatory logic – a way to avoid a deeper exploration of the moral dynamics from which our technologies emerge. I offer an extended reading of Levinas’s formulation of the face of the other to argue that while the machine cannot signify as a face, the machine can announce or anticipate the signification of the face which the self is infinitely responsible to. I reach this conclusion through focusing on the uncertainty and ambiguity of the signification of the face. I then argue that current approaches to the ethics of autonomous vehicles, based on variations of the trolley problem, fail to locate ethical responsibility to the other, precisely in its attempts to evade uncertainty. I demonstrate how an embrace of uncertainty can make the ethics of autonomous vehicles more ethical through a consideration of the concept of shared space and naked streets in the work of the late Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman.

This book presents a conceptual mapping of supererogation in the analytic moral philosophical tradition. It first asks whether supererogation can be conceptualised in the absence of obligation or duty and then makes the case that it can be. It does so by enlisting the resources of the continental tradition, specifically using the work of Emmanuel Levinas and his notion of infinite responsibility. In so doing the book contributes to the ongoing efforts to create a common ethical terminology between the analytic and continental traditions within moral philosophy. Supererogatory actions are praiseworthy actions that go ‘beyond duty’, and yet are not blameworthy when not performed. In responding to this paradox, moral philosophy either brackets or attempts a reductionism of supererogation. Supererogation is epitomised in the paradigmatic figures of the saint and hero. Yet, most would agree that emulating these figures is too morally demanding. We rightly ask: where does moral obligation end? Is it even possible, or desirable to demarcate such a boundary? Besides the important theoretical issues these questions raise, they also speak to practical ethical dilemmas in the contemporary milieu, as they concern the global wealthy’s responsibility to the poor and the challenges of development aid work.

In this paper I seek to critically examine UCT’s and CCT’s and consider how a Levinasian ethics might offer normative guidelines to evaluate such aid programmes. Such an analysis will serve to both critique and supplement the traditional utilitarian analyses of such programmes. In so doing, this paper also hopes to contribute to the business ethics literature in which a Levinasian ethics may be brought to bear on real world problems. I proceed by enlisting Jordaan who argues that a Levinasian ethical politics can be instantiated in institutional designs by allowing a more complex representation of the other’s alterity. Two UCT programmes are interrogated in light of this finding – the first, a UCT programme in a community in Vietnam; the second, a joint CCT/UCT programme targeting adolescent girls in Malawi, designed to test the efficacy of conditionality to achieve certain.

This paper explores the ethical dilemma of conflicting loyalties found in whistleblowing. Central to this dilemma is the internal/external disclosure dichotomy; disclosure of organisational wrongdoing to an external recipient is seen as disloyal, whilst disclosure to an internal recipient is seen as loyal. Understanding how the organisation and society have dealt with these problems over the last 30 years is undertaken through an analysis of Vandekerckhove’s project, which seeks to place the normative legitimisations of whistleblowing legislation and organisational whistleblowing policies within a globalisation semantic able to contain this conflict between society and the organisation. This project fails, it is argued, because of Vandekerckhove’s particular understanding of the organisation as an autopoietic system, i.e. an operationally closed system. A case is made to understand organisations as complex systems, i.e. operationally open systems. Critical Complexity theory sees the identities of systems and components as coterminous. In the context of the organisation, this means that the identities of the corporation and its corporate members arise and die together. The whistleblower’s disclosure reconfigures the organisation by forcing the organisation to open up and make its boundaries flexible, making the designation ‘internal’ or ‘external’ to the organisation, and, therefore, who qualifies as a recipient of a disclosure of wrongdoing, flexible. The organisation is restrained from retailing against the whistleblower, because its identities are coterminous. Furthermore, as the disclosure cannot be categorically defined as either internal or external, the question of whether an external disclosure can qualify as an act of organisational loyalty becomes moot.