The present research work will focus on two morally relevant issues: the nature of the experience of a moral agents and a possible account of the concept of supererogation. Even if, at a preliminary stage, these two subjects look to be unrelated, it will become clear how they both are expressions of the complexity typical of the moral domain.
I will endorse, as a starting point, the approach of moral phenomenology as defined by Maurice Mandelbaum. A phenomenological study is then intended as the analysis of what it is like to perform a given act from the perspective of the first-person. Accordingly, the experience of the moral agent appears to be manifold and heterogeneous. On a normative level, the best moral account that allows the management and the comprehension of such complexity seems to be moral pluralism. In particular, I will distinguish between two sorts of pluralism: methodological pluralism (about the different ways of moral reasoning) and axiological pluralism (about the different values that we take to have ultimate relevance). These denominations represent two ways of understanding morality in virtue of its complexity. As such, the approach of moral complexity relies on the acknowledgment of the manifold structure of morality. In this regard, I will consider the account offered by Charles Larmore in his Patterns of Moral Complexity. His admission of different and equally valid moral principles does not only explain something essential about our moral experience, but it will also become particularly helpful as I will try to apply his theory to the justification of supererogatory acts.
Supererogation, as I will highlight, is a moral concept that relies on the existence of the many levels of morality and on the many possible achievements of the good. In this way, a clear distinction between the Right and the Good will provide the theoretical space for this category of acts. I will define this as the need of complexity, that is, the need of a multilevel theoretical structure that resembles the distinction between precepts and concepts that gave birth to the concept in the Christian tradition.
I will try to show how the loss of moral complexity is the first responsible of the theoretical struggles that the major monist theories (in particular Utilitarianism and Kantian Ethics) face when confronted with the justification of supererogatory acts. These theoretical approaches usually tend to be anti-supererogationists for a clear reason. When the level of the Right and the level of the Good merge into the same category there is no easy way to give an account of morally good acts that go beyond the call of duty. I believe that the endorsement of a pluralist system will solve the so-called problem of supererogation by reestablishing a clear distinction between the two faces of morality: the deontic and the evaluative. This is why, in the final chapter, I will introduce the Multiple Sources Dynamics as possible explanation, on a normative level, of how supererogatory acts can be performed. A system that provides multiple sources of the good has the tools to explain the establishment of our moral obligations and, at the same time, it can explain how we are able to see and foster some other good that lies beyond the level of requirements.
In the present work, moral pluralism will be taken to be a sort of inference to best explanation of different morally relevant issues. This claim will be warranted by highlighting how moral pluralism can explain why our moral experience is so essentially complex (to the point of facing true moral dilemmas) and by showing how it can provide a satisfactory account of the concept supererogation. If these two subjects (which will be considered, at this point, directly related) are proved to hold true, the endorsement of a pluralist system will be considered the preferable option over the other normative systems
