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Full Idea
He who makes moral progress to the highest degree performs all the appropriate actions in all circumstances, and omits none.
Gist of Idea
The highest degree of morality performs all that is appropriate, omitting nothing
Source
Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Sophocles - Sophocles' Electra 4.39.22
Book Ref
'The Stoics Reader', ed/tr. Inwood,B/Gerson,L.P. [Hackett 2008], p.157
A Reaction
Hence concerns about omission as well as commission in the practice of ethics can be seen in the light of character and virtue. The world is fully of nice people who act well, but don't do so well on omissions. Car drivers, for example.
| 20869 | The highest degree of morality performs all that is appropriate, omitting nothing [Chrysippus] |
| 7404 | Nations are not obliged to help one-another, but are obliged not to harm one another [Grotius, by Tuck] |
| 15824 | There are mere omissions (through ignorance, perhaps), and people can 'commit an omission' [Chisholm] |
| 4692 | It is not true that killing and allowing to die (or acts and omissions) are morally indistinguishable [Foot] |
| 4694 | Making a runaway tram kill one person instead of five is diverting a fatal sequence, not initiating one [Foot] |
| 6998 | Folk morality does not clearly distinguish between doing and allowing [Jackson] |
| 6479 | Noninterference requires justification as much as interference does [Nagel] |
| 4658 | Acts and Omissions: bad consequences are morally better if they result from an omission rather than an act [Glover] |
| 4659 | It doesn't seem worse to switch off a life-support machine than to forget to switch it on [Glover] |
| 4660 | Harmful omissions are unavoidable, while most harmful acts can be avoided [Glover] |
| 20881 | The act/omission distinction is important for duties, but less so for consequences [LaFollette] |
| 21136 | Utilitarians conflate acts and omissions; causing to drown and failing to save are the same [Shorten] |