Are ordinary moral agents able to follow the moral lead of heroes and saints? In her Exemplarist Moral Theory Linda Zagzebski provided an exemplarist account to morality grounded on admiration. She focused her research on three possible kinds of exemplar: the saint, the hero and the sage. In this paper, I hold that there are at least two possible ways of following an exemplar (inference and strict emulation). Furthermore, I will try to show that when we take morally exceptional agents (in particular heroes and saints) as exemplars to be emulated, some theoretical and normative problems arise. In particular, I will outline the Feasibility Problem, the Non-motivating Admiration Problem and the Distortion of Duty. Given these issues, I suggest an account of supererogation for this moral approach. I argue that this will provide some theoretical advantages for exemplarism, together with a new attention for extraordinary moral acts. The admiration of praiseworthy deeds, similarly to exemplars, can provide valuable moral guidance.

The concept of supererogation is strictly correlated with duty, since its peculiar value is defined by acts that go beyond our regular obligations. This paper highlights the importance of ‘proximity’ (relational closeness) in allowing the proper theoretical space to supererogation. As a matter of fact if we broaden our sense of duty, the possibility to perform supererogatory acts correspondingly decreases. ‘Special obligations’ emphasize how difficult acts of supererogation are to perform if we stand in some morally-relevant special position with the recipient of our acts. Thus, we can conclude that the relationship between the agent and the recipient of the act (‘proximity’) plays an important role both for our sense of duty (generating ‘special obligations’) and for the possibility of performing supererogatory acts. Furthermore, this analysis brings attention to the fact that whenever an act is ‘supererogatory’, it cannot, at the same time, be a ‘special obligation’ (and vice versa). As a consequence, if ‘proximity’ plays such a role, an objection to the possibility of self-regarding supererogation can be made.