Are you interested in MacIntyre? I read 'After Virtue' earlier in the summer and jamalrob suggested it might be a good joint reading project.

My own view about the case is that 'honesty' is not a virtue, but that its virtuousness is for some reason a cornerstone of the MacIntyre project. So being honest about adultery for the sake of the marriage strikes me as one of those passing fads of pseudo-virtue, not the real thing. When I was young I remember enjoying the rich sensuality of John Updike's tales of American middle-class sexual adventures, and I have a feeling that's the social milieu out of which such a pseudo-virtue would arise.

Of course MacIntyre has more profound arguments, which begin from a belief that it's natural to tell the truth:

To assert is always and inescapably to assert as true, and learning that truth is required from us in assertions is therefore inseparable from learning what it is to assert...

Note that the rule enjoining truth-telling in speech-acts of assertion is constitutive of language-use as such. It is a rule therefore upon which all interpreters of language-use by others cannot but rely. — MacIntyre

He moves from this however to an account of others' views, from Mill and Kant, and of various discussions of lying, to arrive at truth-telling as a virtue. To me this is downright odd: it may be natural or it may be one of the hard-won virtues, but surely not both.

My feeling is that honesty with oneself is constitutive of how one thinks. To distrust one's own words to oneself is a sign of disorder. But (dis)honesty towards others is a learned practice, and in many cases lying is greatly to be recommended.

I am a bit surprised that this thread didn't launch. Is it because... everything that could be said about adultery was most throughly said in previous Agustinian adultery threads? (This isn't a criticism; the previous adulterous threads were just very long.

I am a bit surprised that this thread didn't launch. — Bitter Crank

I'm not that surprised to be honest, merely because we don't have a lot of people that are very familiar with virtue ethics (and the Aristotelian tradition) around it. To be honest, that's why I put (video inside) in the title >:) - to tempt more people to open it and reply (what, you thought I did that by accident?! >:O )

I meant to reply to mcdoodle above, I just never got around to it because there's too much to do lol.

Is it because... everything that could be said about adultery was most throughly said in previous Agustinian adultery threads? — Bitter Crank

Surprisingly, if you look on my profile, you'll find zero threads about adultery started by me :P - although we did hijack a few other threads (about other subjects) to discuss it.