  It is generally agreed that ordinary morality does not require beneficent acts that involve severe sacrifice or maximum altruism, such as a physician’s putting herself, without protective drugs and equipment, in a life-threatening condition in an epidemic in order to provide medical care. Such extraordinary beneficent conduct typically derives from moral ideals rather than norms of obligation, although the line between obligations of beneficence and ideals of beneficence is often difficult to draw. Saintly and heroic beneficence (and benevolence) are at the outermost end of a continuum of beneficent conduct and commitment. This continuum is not merely a continuum mapping the territory beyond duty (supererogation). It is a continuum of beneficence itself, starting with weak obligatory beneficence (e.g., helping a stranger with mild disabilities enter a room with an extremely heavy door) and then moving on to strong obligatory beneficence (such as rescuing a person in danger when the danger is not severe for the rescuer). The continuum of obligation is the first half of the continuum, which runs from weak obligations (e.g., such as conscientiousness in attending to a friend’s welfare) to strict obligation (as in the obligation to aid someone sitting next to you who has been injured in an automobile accident when you have not been injured). The continuum then moves to the domain of ideals of beneficence that are morally nonrequired, exceptionally virtuous, and the like. An absence of any level of obligatory beneficence—from weak to strong—constitutes a defect in the moral life. But a failure to perform high-level acts of supererogation such as heroic acts of self-sacrifice to benefit others cannot be accounted a defect. Beneficence is best understood as spread across this full continuum, despite the considerable controversy that exists about where obligation ends and supererogation begins on the continuum.