Praiseworthiness and Required Action

Is the performance of a required action ever praiseworthy? Both the moral worth and moral responsibility literatures address this question. The dominant view in the former holds that all well-motivated required actions are praiseworthy. Zoë Johnson King challenges this view, arguing that only well-motivated required actions that exceed minimal decency are praiseworthy. Themes in the moral responsibility literature suggest a disjunctive answer: either required actions are never praiseworthy, or they are praiseworthy only when they are also good, performed because they are good, and exceed the moral minimum. In this paper, I offer a different answer. I argue that praise is a fitting response to all good actions performed because they are good. Therefore, all required and good actions done because they are good are praiseworthy.