SUSAN WOLF'S “MORAL SAINT”

Susan Wolf's “Moral Saint”

Susan Wolf's “Moral Saint”

In this research paper we are going to discuss Susan Wolf's “moral saint” and to elaborate why Wolf finds the moral saint unappealing.

On Wolf s account, a saint is someone we want neither to be nor be around, because the saint cannot devote him to hobbies, cannot tell certain jokes or laugh at them, cannot be pessimistic, and must generally be so engrossed in his moral mission as to be almost irritating.

The challenging fact is Wolf's attack on moral saints; and an attack it is, since it seems that she would not necessarily see the soldier who jumped on the grenade as worthy of praise, as would Pybus. Although at one point Wolf tries to make it clear that she does not mean to condemn the moral saint (Urmson 1958 198—216), what is more apparent in her essay is her desire that neither she, noranyo ne that she cares for most, be moral saints. For her, to be a moral saint is not particularly rational, good, or desirable (419). (Perhaps I do not understand what she means by “condemn.”) She is to be distinguished from Phybus, who would perhaps think that to be a moral saint is rational, good, and desirable, but only within (he triadic structure of moral discourse that Urmson tries to rep lace.

We should note that by “moral saint” Wolf means something other than what Urmson or Pybus mean.

Wolf means by these words “a person whose every action is as morally good as possible, a person, that is, who is as morally worthy as can be” (419). This is an old definition, to say the least. One wonders whether there could ever be such a person; note her use of the words “every,” “as possible,” and “as can be.” The two historical examples she cites of moral saints are only briefly mentioned, and are of little help: St. Francis of Assisi and Mother Theresa. Both of these figures, with their belief in a traditional Christian ant hropology, which includes a doctrine of sin, would certainly reject this notion of moral sainthood, either in reference to themselves or others. (Elizabeth 1982 193—99)

For Wolf, therefore, they must be saints in spite of themselves. The question we must ask is: if there could be a moral saint in Wolf's sense, why would adopting this person as a model not be rational or good or desirable? The necessarily hypothetical character of the question seriously curtails Wolf's avowed project of def ending the intuitions of common sense (e.g., 419, 420, 427, 430, 439).

Wolf does distinguish two different sorts of moral saint (unlike Pybus), although both would have to meet what would count, for Wolf, as a necessary condition for moral sainthood in contemporary Western culture:

That one's life be dominated by a commitment to improving the welfare of others or of society as a whole (Wolf 1982 419—39)

. Second, a saint might be someone whose concern for ...