From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2002 3:31 PM
To: paulholbach@gmx.net
Subject: RE: Your book 3


> I think you slightly overstate the distinction between 
> "ethics" and "virtue philosophy"

I agree that my scoping of "ethics" is a little narrower than
what a lot of people would expect, but there are at least three
reasons why I'm doing it:

1. In colloquial American usage, I perceive that "ethics" is 
not considered to have as wide a scope as "morality".
2. If I used "ethics" to encompass all three areas of moral
philosophy (i.e. all of axiology except aesthetics), then I'd
have no good name for the area I call "ethics".
3. My terminology sublty reinforces my view that virtue and vice are
not proper areas for legislation or compulsion.

>> I would probably define
>> 'morality' as the union of virtue and ethics (including one's political
>> behavior). I would say that we can legislate ethics, but not morality (i.e. not
>> the component of morality that lies outside ethics, namely virtue/vice.)
> 
> Paraphrase: Morality is the object of ethics, the latter of which can be
> used synonymously with "moral philosophy" in most cases.

That paraphrase aptly captures the mainstream notion of 'ethics', but
it contrasts with my explicit exclusion of virtue/vice issues from what I
call 'ethics'.