Biancu, Stefano <br/><br/>
The saint and the hero: a stumbling block for moral philosophy? 

 -  2021.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 98 
<br/><br/> Starting with James Urmson’s article “Saints and Heroes” (1958), the categories of saint, hero, and the supererogatory have become part of the vocabulary of English-language moral philosophy, having previously been excluded by the tradition. Recently, however, in the context of what is called “heroism science”, some have proposed a separation between the concepts of the saint and the heroic in its moral sense, arguing for the extra-moral character of heroism with the explicit intention of encouraging its spread in contemporary societies. Starting with the reflections of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Henri Bergson on the figure of the hero, in this article we will seek to demonstrate that in all respects heroism is a moral phenomenon that reflects the dynamics of human freedom and constitutes the object of a non-enforceable supererogatory obligation.