Tom Griffith

Moral Sainthood

        The concept of moral sainthood quickly becomes a negative one, simply because no one can be perfect. When we hold high expectations for people, they will inevitably fail to meet these criteria for perfection. When this occurs, individuals who hold high expectations of their moral saint will experience a huge let down. Also, a mere onlooker may get the wrong idea, and value the immoral decisions that this  person made, or at least view their mistake as acceptable behavior.

        One of the main arguments against moral sainthood is that there is a limit to how much morality we, as humans, can take. A true moral saint would carry through with their virtues to an excess. You would not be able to make a negative assessment to an immoral person, or a positive one to moral one. A true moral saint can not gain any skills, or glean any joy from non-moral events, like winning a football game, or finishing a painting.  “The normal person's direct and specific desires for objects, activites, and events that conflict with the attainment of moral perfection are not simply sacrificed but removed, suppressed, or subsumed” (Wolf 350). These would be pointless attempts at folly. Moral perfection is not only impossible, it's not desirable socially.

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        The qualities that a true moral saint would possess, if saints did exist, are qualities that are unattractive to society. A true moral saint cannot go through the normal social experiences we go through, like developing a sense of humor, or getting into an intimate relationship. A moral saint would not conform to any of the molds society creates. Given many of these molds may be inappropriate or immoral, there are some you can not overlook as necessary. Your overall characteristics as a person would suffer as well, seeing how the well-rounded qualities we all need would not be present. ...

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