Where’s the ad hominem? He’s not using the badness of the man to attack the statement. He is noting that even though he thinks the man is bad, the statement is respectable (with his exegesis).
Humans are bad at correctly dealing with affect-laden sentiments. It’s bad practice even to mention a status-valuation of a person in a context nearby to a discussion of the merits of something that person said.
That is, it doesn’t actually matter all that much that
He’s not using the badness of the man to attack the statement.
It’s enough that he mentioned the badness of the man before discussing the statement.
There would of course be no problem if the participants in the discussion were intelligent, rather than human.
Where’s the ad hominem? He’s not using the badness of the man to attack the statement. He is noting that even though he thinks the man is bad, the statement is respectable (with his exegesis).
Humans are bad at correctly dealing with affect-laden sentiments. It’s bad practice even to mention a status-valuation of a person in a context nearby to a discussion of the merits of something that person said.
That is, it doesn’t actually matter all that much that
It’s enough that he mentioned the badness of the man before discussing the statement.
There would of course be no problem if the participants in the discussion were intelligent, rather than human.