On throwing in the ethical towel

There are two kinds of wrongdoers: wrongdoers who do wrong while believing that they are doing right, and wrongdoers who do wrong while knowing that they are doing wrong. Plato denied that there were wrongdoers of the second kind; the Platonic view is that wrongdoers are just people who are mistaken about what is right, not people knowingly doing what is wrong. Many wrongdoers seem to share this view; on examination, they turn out to believe that they are not doing wrong at all, that what they do is permissible, justified, acceptable, and nothing to be ashamed of (Aaagh! I mean, 'nothing of which to be ashamed').

Balderdash! I am a liar, cheat, and adulterer. What I do is impermissible, unjustified, unacceptable, and shameful. I have no wish to salve my conscience by pretending otherwise. I was not tricked or misled into my current obligations to wife and family. I cannot claim to have gone into things blind. And by betraying those obligations I am not engaged in some worthwhile project, of value sufficient to outweigh my commitments. No - I am a liar, cheat, and adulterer; a wrongdoer. I am not proud of this, but ashamed. Perhaps I am proud to be ashamed - once we go meta, all bets are off. But I would hate for anyone to read this blog as if it were written by someone who believes that what he is doing is right. I am a wrongdoer. What I do is wrong. I know that what I do is wrong. And yet I continue to do it, because it is fun, even though wrong. That is why they call it temptation.

Candy's approach, as expressed in her forthright attack on me in recent comments seems to me like that of a good defense attorney - I should plead to the lesser charge, strike a deal to get the others dropped, explain that, while I did do these naughty things, I did them in the nicest possible way, treating my lovers as they would want to be treated. Though I can see the technical merit in this position, it leaves me quite unmoved. I cannot bring myself to treat my lovers better than I treat my wife, and as I do not treat her as she would wish to be treated, and also treat her very shoddily, I am not about to shore up my virtue by treating my lovers as they would wish to be treated, or to treat them as well as they deserve. I do not think I am admirable for behaving like this - I think I am a first-class shit. But that is no more than to say that I am a liar, cheat, and adulterer - and that is news from nowhere.

One of my readers praised Candy recently, and I enjoy Candy's comments also. So I have asked if she would like to contribute posts on occasion. I await her response. Perhaps she would rather not be associated too closely with a man who not only does wrong by fucking women other than his wife, but compounds the wrongdoing by treating the women he fucks extramaritally just as badly as he treats his wife.