Virtue as embodied necessity is not a chosen or rejectable stance

Evidence

Habitus, in contrast to this political model of ethics, is not something one accepts or rejects, it is part of what one essentially is and must do. (The ethics of passionate necessity encompasses tragedy.) Oedipus puts out his own eyes not because his conscience or his god considers that he deserves to be punished for failing to be responsible—or because he thinks he does—but because (as he says) he cannot bear the thought of having to look his father and his mother in the eyes when he joins them beyond the grave, or to see his children, “begotten as they were begotten.” He acts as he does necessarily, out of the passion that is his habitus. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 468

Categorization

• DEFINE: Contrasts habitus (part of what one is, not chosen) against the political model of ethics as accept/reject.
• XREF: connects to: Matriarchal legitimacy being natural cannot become a valued imposed norm — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 349