Supererogatory surplus performance generates claims although nobody can require it

Evidence

We can use an old concept and qualify this peculiar advance with normative consequences we have been talking about as a supererogatory performance. One may call supererogatory a performance which does not flow from some previously assumed duty but manifests itself as meritorious, and attracts respect. In spite of recent attempts, the relationship between such a performance and duty remains logically and analytically obscure. However, what is of interest to us here is purely its function in the genesis of trust. It entails somehow an excess on the normative which has some parallels with the excess on the information discussed previously; it constitutes a surplus performance, which nobody can require, but which (for the self-same reason) engenders claims – as benefactions for instance engender a claim to gratitude. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 198

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Defines the supererogatory — the surplus act beyond duty that both proves trustworthiness and creates claims. Central to Stevens’s ‘dignity’ as supreme competence.
• XREF: Stevens’s professional excellence as ‘greatness’/‘dignity’ is precisely supererogatory performance — meritorious beyond duty, generating claims to respect.

Broader Connections

• Supererogatory acts convert the conditions for trust’s emergence into maintenance #expands (0.70) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 198