Welcome friends!
The holiday season is upon us once again so I thought I should do some sort of special post in honor of the occasion. I suppose I can’t talk about the manifold dangers posed by international conservatism every time out although that would certainly be easy enough. Let’s do something Christmasy. Of course, I should probably clarify that as an atheist and humanist what I think of as Christmasy is something relating to the brotherhood and sisterhood of all humankind (and it’s not getting any easier let me tell you) not the fabricated birthday of some ancient holy man / supernatural entity. I’m thinking ethics not religious mumbo jumbo. Fortunately I just read an entry in a little philosophy for common folk book I glance at now and then to pass the time entitled Fifty Philosophy Ideas You Really Need to Know by Ben Dupre. I think I’ve mentioned it before. It’s a collection of little two page blurbs introducing various philosophical ideas from a layperson’s perspective. Anyway, this time out I read the blurb on an issue called supererogatory acts, which is a fancy term for what one might call heroic acts or acts going beyond the call of duty. Do you ever encounter ideas you think have BS written all over them? Someone is blabbing way and you’re listening to be polite but in the back of your mind you’re thinking what a crock? Well, that’s the feeling I was having. Let’s talk about it.
The basic idea is that some people apparently suggest there’s some sort of philosophical conundrum about heroic acts based on the argument that if just taking the normal non-heroic line is perfectly ethically acceptable how can one say that certain acts that go beyond the normal non-heroic line are even better ethically speaking... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website. All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee. Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right? If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then. Thank you my friends!
