Trekkie word of the day: Supererogation
by Rob - June 28th, 2009.Filed under: Star Trek.
In the 2009 Star Trek film, young Spock is being quizzed by computers, and we hear him answer a question but do not hear the question he was answering.
His answer was, “When an act is morally praiseworthy but not morally obligatory.”
And, in fact, there is a term in ethics for such acts: Supererogation (super-er-o-gay-shun), from the Latin meaning to pay out over and above. So the question must have been, “What is supererogation?” or words to that effect.
Now you know. :)
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March 23rd, 2010 at 1:51 am
I had not seen the movie until renting it a month ago. Great movie! Nothing is left to chance in such movies and they gave us a partial phrase to tease us. Stanford U has a great write-up on Supererogation – http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supererogation