ABSTRACT
Virtuous and vicious resemble good and bad in that their logical function is primarily an evaluative one and that they can and usually do also have descriptive force. Virtues and vices then, are speaking of community appraisals, are simply either dispositions, or types of conduct, which have evoked moral commendation and moral condemnation respectively. A large number of so-called virtues and vices are bound up with sexual behaviour. For although many individualists feel strongly that current vice/virtue norms are archaic, and although many who subscribe to the received norms in public flout them in private if they get the opportunity. There are still large and influential bodies of opinion within any given community which strive for the retention of these norms. It may be that these norms, on the whole, promote interpersonal harmony; but some of them probably do not and anyway there is nothing inherently necessary about any of them.
