Aristotle's Ethics

This month we have an intensive class on sexuality, team taught by 6 lecturers to cover psychology, scripture, spirituality and ethics.

Today we looked at the virtue of chastity in terms of Aristotle's ethics. For Aristotle, a virtue is the tension between two other values, which on their own would be vices. Eg, the virtue of courage is the tension between paralysing fear on one hand, and foolhardy recklessness on the the other.

The virtue of chastity, in this schema, becomes the tension between attachment and detachment, each of which can be unhealthy in the extremes. Being too attached to another is to cling, to make unreasonable demands. to be jealous, and for both parties to lack freedom. Being too detached is to avoid all intimacy, to be emotionally absent, and surprisingly, even to be promiscuous (for that is detaching sex from intimacy).

We read a great article by Margaret Farley (apparently famous) on commitment, trying to analyse how and why we make commitments in relationships, and though some of the conclusions seem obvious to state - that commitment give the other security, gives my impetus to follow through, etc - in a culture where many people seem to have option paralysis and never commit, it was good to think through the logical and emotional steps necessary.