Neo-Aristotelian Suberogation

This chapter develops and defends the following account of neo-Aristotelian suberogation: an action is suberogatory iff it fails to hit the target of a relevant virtue, but is not overall vicious. This account implies that all true instances of suberogation are only trivially bad. Thus, pace influential defenders of suberogation, there are no instances of truly villainous suberogation. This chapter argues that this implication counts in favor of the account insofar as the supposed cases of villainous suberogation offered by those who defend its existence are, unlike those offered in defense of trivial suberogation, wholly unconvincing. So the account correctly identifies just those actions that are suberogatory as suberogatory, and gives a plausible explanation of their suberogatory status.