Editorial

Sin and Vice

Abstract

Albeit often overlapping, sin and vice are two related yet clearly distinguished concepts. It would require an extremely long detour to sketch the history of such thick, central notions in Western culture, as well as their similarities, differences, and overlappings. Sin is a polysemic notion. The word refers, primarily,  to an action whereby an agent intentionally fails to live up to the will or commands of God (see Stump, 2018). However, sin can be also considered as a disposition of the will, i.e., an inclination to engage in sinful actions (Plantinga 2000). Finally, according to parts of the Christian tradition, sin is a metaphysical state, i.e., a condition of “uncleanness” which marks a fundamental ontological difference between human beings and God (M. Adams 1991, 20f). While according to the Christian thought vice can be a cause of sin, and a sinful disposition may closely resemble a vice, the two concepts shouldn’t be confused. First, while sin pertains to a theological vocabulary, talking of vices is perfectly compatible with a secular philosophical discourse, as the recent success of virtue ethics and virtue-vice epistemology testifies. This comes as no surprise, if one thinks that the very origin of the concept is rooted in the secular philosophical tradition tracing back to Plato and Aristotle. Secondly, within character-based moral and epistemic theories, a vice is, unequivocally, a trait of character. As such, it is part of an agent’s psychological makeup, which means that it is a stable feature of their moral psychology, independently of its specific behavioral manifestations. And while an action may well be vicious, it can be so only insofar as it springs from a vicious trait, which has—so to speak—ontogenetic, conceptual, and even normative priority over the actions it elicits.