IC,
You still didn't answer my question.
I'm sorry...I'm not seeing that I'm not. Can you pose it again?
You have told us the most important aspect of ethics is the judging of conduct. This being the case then it is at odds with Legalism (theological). An overemphasis on judging conduct. You appear to be overemphasizing conduct. Please enlighten me.
Ah. I see the confusion.
We human beings look to ethics as a way of judging conduct...actions, in particular. Whether that is an overemphasis would have to be shown; but Virtue Ethics, with its focus on "character" is in an extremely weak position to do so, since specifying character is not, as Aristotle supposed, easy or uncontentious to do. So I think until further notice, we're safe to say that judging actions is ethics' primary purpose -- at least so far as we humans are concerned.
Very different is the matter of our actions with regard to God. We humans don't try to take our ethics from that, unless we happen to be Divine Command theorists or other kind of religious ethicists, obviously. Such ethicists think that there is an objective moral code to which human ethics must refer. Secular ethicists would, of course, deny that.
Legalism has no relationship or interest for secular human ethics. There, it is not wrong. Be a legalist if you want, or not if you don't. But legalism is wrong for Christian ethics. And anyone who thinks a Christian ethicist is counselling legalism would be wrong. For no Christian who understands Christianity aright imagines that doing good actions, however nice they may be in themselves, makes one acceptable to God, or meets the actual standard of His moral code. However, secular ethicists often *think* that's what Christian ethicists must be believing.
That is because they do not understand theology; and they do not understand theology because they think it's a lot of talk about nothing, so there's nothing *to* understand. Of course, they're wrong. But they think they're correct.
In the same quote you advocate a functional approach to ethics.
Absolutely not. Rather, I would say I
describe secular ethics as a mad attempt to achieve functionality.
But I certainly don't believe that's the right way to go. It's just what they are forced to do by the logic of their own ontology. If there's no God and no teleology, who can tell us what "ethic" is right? For that matter, what does "right" even mean, then? So secularists are thrown back on function or nothing; but even functionalism doesn't save the day for them.
That's because all secular ethics are deeply incoherent. But hey, you don't have to take my word for it. A perfectly good explanation of the same was in PN, as outlined by Joel Marks a year or so ago. It's why he gave up being a Kantian. (You'll find that his ensuing option, "Desirism" is just as obvious a mess in this regard as the Kantianism he left, though.)
I just now note that there is also a new article in this month's PN, arguing the very same thing: that essentially, secular ethics is a dead dog. You might find it interesting too.
