By the time the Kings River reaches the floor of the Central Valley in northern California, it has given up some of its whitewater turbulence, its falls through rocky narrows and over picturesque cataracts in the high Sierra Nevada replaced by gentler bends and ripples in the shallows. The kayakers and whitewater rafters upriver yield to picnickers and inflatable pool toys, people less in search of a thrill and more interested in a break from the heat. Still, the waters are cold, and currents can be unpredictable and strong.
Neveah Diaz, then seven years old, was at Winton Park with her family in early June of 2020, playing in the shallows of the river. When she was pulled into the main current of the river and deeper waters, her struggle to stay above the surface became evident. Some of those close by, including her mother, entered the water but failed to reach her, and were themselves swept downriver, where they were later able to exit safely. Arthur Caballero, then sixty-two, was fishing nearby. Noticing what was underway, he also entered the river, and he succeeded in pushing Neveah to calmer waters where she was eventually helped ashore by other bystanders. He did so despite having no connection at all with Neveah or her family or her party, and despite being fully clothed. Like several of the other would-be rescuers, Caballero too was swept downriver. Unlike those others, he did not get drawn into an eddy or deposited on the shore. He lost consciousness at some point, and by the time his body was recovered around an hour later and about a half mile away, it was too late to save him – he was pronounced dead at the hospital.Footnote 1
Caballero’s case captures several paradigmatic features of moral heroism, and he is rightly called a hero. Cases like his are the focus of this book, and I argue they merit our close attention for a whole host of reasons. Instances of moral heroism are often one kind of example of what we can generally think of as humanity at its best – but in ways that are regularly astounding, even for jaded observers of the human condition in the early twenty-first century. Moral heroes illuminate moral possibilities that might otherwise be neglected. Moral heroes so often are distinctly unlike other kinds of heroes – think of superheroes, who bring some otherworldly power to bear on solving problems, or sporting heroes, for example, who are so often supremely talented in ways that the rest of us are not. As a result, it is enticing to think that the moral possibilities that moral heroes illuminate are also possibilities for us. Moral heroes tend to be quite approachable, whereas other kinds of exemplars may seem so unlike the rest of us as to be functionally alien: other kinds of shining example may be more blinding than illuminating. On the one hand, in a broad way, this means that reflecting on moral heroism is a way to learn about ourselves and our own moral values, capacities, and aspirations. On the other hand, this immediately raises questions about how we perceive and approach programs of moral improvement and moral education.
The aims of this book are to argue for a particular view about how we should understand moral heroism, and what we can and cannot learn from it. Arthur Caballero was, by all accounts, an exceedingly decent man. He was survived by family members who remember him as a beloved grandfather and uncle, among others. As is often the case in such situations, local news programs covered the story, both when the events took place in early summer of 2020, and later when Caballero was posthumously awarded the Carnegie Medal for his act of extraordinary heroism. In honoring Caballero, the reports and testimonies of relatives recounted heart-warming anecdotes about him, expressed how he would be remembered, and noted that his selfless act of rescue “summed up his noble and upstanding character.”Footnote 2 This interpretation of Caballero’s heroism represents a common tendency to capture its significance in characterological terms, a tendency that has both lay and scholarly inflections. In both the run of ordinary life and academic examinations of moral excellence, characterological interpretations are predominant in our thinking.
In particular, in moral philosophy virtue thinking has dominated how we approach moral excellence. Virtue thinking inserts the moral virtues of the hero as an answer to just about every kind of question we might have about moral heroism: What explains why moral heroes do what they do, why most of us do not act similarly? They are virtuous in some respect in which we are not. What can we learn from moral heroism, and what would it mean to emulate a moral hero? That acquiring virtue is required to do great moral good, and we should attempt to cultivate moral virtue in ourselves. How can moral heroism be deployed in moral education? As exemplars of virtue to be imitated by initiates. How should we respond to moral heroism? With admiration for the moral virtues of heroes, and by commemorating heroes and their virtues.
I will argue that although there may well be much to appreciate and learn from in virtue theory and virtue ethics, virtue thinking leaves much to be desired as an approach to moral heroism; our thinking about moral excellence would be advanced by becoming more nuanced and varied. Broadsides against virtue ethics are not really of interest to me since my argumentative aims are not to discredit virtue theory in any general or thorough way. It is also no interest of mine to discredit any actual moral heroes or memories of them held by loved ones. So, while I argue for a view that has reforming implications for how we view and respond to moral heroism, I claim that among the benefits of the view I advance, as compared to the received approach so marked by virtue thinking, is that it offers us a more sustainable way of honoring what really deserves to be honored about moral heroism.
The core motivation behind the arguments of this book is thus to reform and diversify how we think about a specific form of moral excellence, moving past the dominant virtue narrative that functions in many contexts as received wisdom. In Chapter 1, I begin by making some distinctions that help focus our attention on the particular phenomenon of moral heroism. In doing so, I draw on a number of paradigmatic cases culled from discussions of moral exemplarity. I use those cases to distinguish and set to one side other kinds of (non-moral) heroism, and also to begin to distinguish the moral hero from other kinds of moral exemplars. The arguments I elaborate in subsequent chapters thus begin with understanding and theorizing the phenomenon of moral heroism, where prominent tasks include confronting the sometimes monolithic treatment moral exemplars have been subjected to in ethics and moral psychology, and distinguishing moral heroism both from other kinds of heroism and from other kinds of moral exemplarity. In Chapter 2, I then develop the negative case against virtue thinking as an exhaustive approach to understanding moral excellence. I argue that virtue thinking exhibits a number of serious inadequacies when we contemplate moral heroism. The basic shape of the problem is that moral heroism often arrives without any plausible virtue attribution becoming available in the hero. In adopting the virtue approach, we generally take the wrong lesson from these cases, which are at once remarkable and yet not entirely uncommon. This distorts our vision of this important kind of moral excellence. I therefore suggest a different approach to understanding moral heroism that eschews virtue thinking, but instead establishes and trades on a notion of moral achievement instantiated by making high-stakes sacrifices.
Chapter 3 develops my theory of heroic moral achievement. The pivotal concept in my theory of moral achievement is sacrifice, a concept which itself requires explication. This theory positions us to articulate what moral heroism consists in and to respond to it appropriately, with the right mix of humility and inspiration. It furthermore avoids the inadequacies exhibited by the virtue approach to moral heroism. In Chapter 4, I explore issues in thinking through the agency of moral heroes in light of my theory of heroic moral achievement. This chapter answers a need since jettisoning virtue thinking in this area creates a vacuum in our understanding of the psychology of moral heroes. I draw upon recent work in moral psychology to articulate what I take to be an empirically supported view of what is interesting and possibly distinctive about morally heroic agency. One crucial concept here is a phenomenon that Bernard Williams termed “practical necessity.”Footnote 3 In tandem with recent work in psychology, I use this concept to offer a picture of morally heroic agency that helps explain how it is possible, how it is distinctive yet not unattainable, and how it is compatible with treating morally heroic actions as morally praiseworthy despite featuring a necessitating influence on the will of many moral heroes.
In Chapter 5 I entertain some of the implications of the view I’ve defended so far, with a focus on supererogation, or actions that are best characterized as morally good but ‘beyond the call of duty.’ The first task in this chapter is to square my account of moral heroism, centering as it does on sacrifice and practical necessity, with the very possibility of supererogation. Having resolved some puzzles that combination seems to raise, I then move the discussion to whether we ought to aspire to moral achievements like moral heroism ourselves, and whether, for example, we should attempt to foster moral heroism in others, including our children. The theme of fostering moral heroism in others is also pursued in Chapter 6, where I turn more specifically to questions about the role of exemplars such as moral heroes in moral education. Again I entertain recent work from the relevant fields, where an enduring interest in exemplars as models has been operationalized into various programs of character education. Since I argue with the aim of deemphasizing or displacing virtue thinking and thus characterological approaches to moral heroism, my view has some revisionary implications for how character education programs are conceived and implemented. I address what might be salvageable in such programs, and explore new directions in which moral education might be pushed by my view. The theme that less monolithic treatment of moral exemplars would be a productive move again returns in this discussion.
Finally, before a brief Conclusion offering some reflections on the arguments advanced, their limitations, and where they might lead future work, in Chapter 7 I address different ways of thinking about how to respond to moral heroism, especially in tasks of public commemoration. In this arena, the view of moral achievement I develop again has implications that diverge from those of the received, virtue-intensive approach. I draw on recent thinking and controversies about public art, statues, and monuments to illustrate and argue in defense of these implications.
By the end of the book, my hope is to have convinced the reader that moral heroism is worth attending to, and that there remain important differences in how we go about that to be explored and argued over. The negative case against the virtue approach to moral heroism is an important element of my argumentative aims. But independently of how those arguments are assessed, the positive case I make for understanding moral heroism as a special kind of moral achievement instantiated by high-stakes sacrifices has advantages too numerous to ignore. The implications of this view are relevant across large swaths of moral life, as I show. In this sense, getting moral heroism right matters in surprising ways, and it matters for just about all of us, even if we never end up being morally heroic ourselves.
