Among the more interesting statements (in addition to, as William Saletan notes, his admission of real love for his paramour) in Mark Sanford's tearful apology was this: "It's not a moral, rigid list of do's and don'ts just for the heck of do's and don'ts."
Maybe Sanford is a virtue ethicist!
It would be nice if he had discussed this with his fellow GOP'ers before all this went down. He might have suggested to them that one can be moral while being unsure as to whether certain acts are right or wrong, or even sure that it is acts or thoughts that constitute what's right and wrong, or that the questioning of certain rules does not immediately devolve into relativism. While he's at it, could he let also let the GOP know that one does not need God to have rules of morality? That, in fact, there is a rather well-known and rather long-discussed problem with saying that morality merely is that which God tells us to do?
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Thanks for this helpful information.
ReplyDeleteSanford prosecutes contemporary virtue ethics in light of the fact that it's anything but a full-blooded relative of Aristotelian ethics, which is a convincing option in contrast to contemporary virtue ethics and all cutting edge moral way of thinking.