Julia Driver (The University of Texas at Austin): "Blame and the Suberogatory"

Several accounts of blame and wrongdoing hold that the only actions that are blameworthy are actions that are wrong. In this paper I argue against this claim by first presenting a subset of actions that I have termed “suberogatory” – actions that are bad, but not forbidden. The subset are those actions that involve persons standing on their rights in cases where the balance of moral reasons suggest they not do so. I then explore ways that my critic might respond: either by holding that these actions are, in fact, wrong, it is just that we sometimes have the right to act wrongly, or by holding that these actions are not blameworthy and are apt for mere moral criticism. After discussing these responses I argue that both are inadequate and offer further development of the account of what a suberogatory action is by noting that that we can distinguish normative demands from mere normative expectations and that suberogatory actions are violations of mere normative expectations.