Seventeen

CRITICAL RESPONSE TO “VIRTUE ETHICS AND ADULTERY”

Ana Victoria (Viki) Soady

In “Virtue Ethics and Adultry,” Raja Halwani began by noting that the Kan- tian ethics of duty model has been used to argue both for and against the ad- missibility of adultery and stated that application of an ethics of virtue might allow for a better exploration of the “complexities” surrounding the topic. He divided his discussion into three parts. Part 1 described the many-faceted na- ture of virtue ethics and then addressed the “misgivings” that proponents of virtue ethics have with Kantian theory and consequentialism. Part 2 examined the deficiencies of Kantian theory when applied to the issue of adultery. Part 3 discussed what an ethics of virtue may convey when applied to adultery. Two aspects need to be mentioned. The first has to do with the use of gay examples of varietist and liberated sexual practices as representing sexual mores that are then generalized to include heterosexual and lesbian practices. These descriptions do not accurately depict the whole of the gay community, let alone “others.” Secondly, the last example given of the factors which fig- ure in the decision to have an affair is weakly argued, precisely, it would seem, because an ethic of virtue does not have the tools to deal with an issue such as adultery unless virtue ethics can move beyond modern egoism. As Alasdair MacIntyre states in After Virtue:

The egoist is thus, in the ancient and medieval world, always someone who has made a fundamental mistake about where his own good lies and someone who has thus and to that extent excluded himself from human relationships. (1984, p. 229)

It would seem to me that Halwani is correct, nonetheless, to reject deon- tological arguments, or indeed, the Kantian categories as inadequate for deal- ing with the issue of adultery. Such “objective” theories, in which monolithic ethical constructs precede virtues of character, are not likely to constrain the lover once he or she is in the tangle of the sheets if they have not done so before. And once the deed is done, so to speak, duty ethics can, in fact, take what might have been an unpremeditated and fairly casual interlude and transmogrify it into a love story of vast magnitude and moral urgency, with predictably devastating results. On the morning after, when the sheets are set back somewhat straight, a heretofore virtuous and chaste spouse, who would like to continue to seem virtuous at least in his or her own eyes—and perhaps 150 ANA VICTORIA (VIKI) SOADY in those of the new bed partner—often reverts to reason tinged with shame, duty, and the awful specter of looming consequentialism. Rather than accept the pleasure of the random encounter, the virtuous individual will justify his or her actions by declaring that he/she must be “in love” with this new per- son, or they would never have committed the transgression. To do otherwise would be to admit, as a practitioner of virtue ethics might have the moral libe- rality to allow, that one, or perhaps both of the individuals now groping for their shoes and eyeglasses, had simply used the other as a Kantian means to a pleasurable end. And so, that’s that. They should simply shake hands and resume their lives, as Edna St. Vincent Millay expressed:

XLI I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind, Am urged by your propinquity to find Your person fair, and feel a certain zest To bear your body’s weight upon my breast: So subtly is the fume of life designed, To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind, And leave me once again undone, possessed. Think not for this, however, the poor treason Of my stout blood against my staggering brain, I shall remember you with love, or season My scorn with pity,—let me make it plain: I find this frenzy insufficient reason For conversation when we meet again. (2003)

Because the promise of marital fidelity derives from somewhat over- blown, religious and moral provisos designed originally to protect paternity, many humans invest the sex act with such a holiness and proprietarial aura that such truth and rationality as this poem conveys are most often unachiev- able between partners. Therefore, the straying autonomous self must be re- deemed from any fault and freed to take its pleasures where it finds them. Deep reasons for the diversion are sought; human sexuality cannot be that simple: someone must take the responsibility. The usual culprit, is, of course, the most convenient, the spouse at home, who in one way or another, has not met this or that need, offered this or that ego-stroke, etc. Too often, part of this process involves the devaluing of the original spouse, frequently, almost beyond recognition, and a persistent and radical revision of the nature of the contractual promise of exclusivity and the marriage itself. Then, the adulterer is most often able to reason his or her way to the convenient conclusion that the affair happened and this magnificent new love bloomed because of myste- rious, beautiful, and passionate rapture which eradicated reason and left the perpetrators NO CHOICE, moral or otherwise.