Are Virtues No More than Dispositions to Obey Moral Rules?
	Walter Schaller (1990)
	Introduction to Ethics
	Professor Douglas Olena
The General Question
	297 Some, including Alasdair MacIntyre suggest that virtues properly occupy center stage in morality and that „moral rules¾ can only be understood by reference to the virtues.
	Others say that moral rules „are the primary concept of the moral life¾ and the virtues are derived from them, for morality is concerned with right and wrong conduct and duty.
Specific Questions
	297 definitions
		aretaic: virtue or excellence
		deontic: related to duty or moral obligation
	Problems:
		Do judgments about the goodness or virtuousness of persons presuppose prior judgments about the rightness of actions?
		„Is it possibleä to judge that an action is selfish, or unkind, or disrespectful, but not wrongä
		or does the fact that an action manifests as a vice imply that it also violates some moral rule?¾
Thesis:
	297 „I shall argue that the prevailing or Standard View of the connection between virtues and duties is false.¾
	The Standard View states that moral virtues are understood in terms of duty to obey moral rules.
	But some virtues are recalcitrant. They do not fit in the standard view, do not correspond to duties the way the standard view requires.
The Standard View
	297 The three thesis:
		1. Moral rules require persons to perform or omit certain actions.
		These rules can be performed by people who lack the virtues.
		2. The virtues are dispositions to obey the moral rules.
		At the core of the virtue of benevolence is a disposition to perform those actions that fulfill the duty of beneficence.
The Standard View
	297 The three thesis:
		3. The moral virtues have only instrumental or derivative value: 
		Individuals who possess the virtues are more likely to do what is right ã i.e. to obey the moral rules ã than are people who lack such dispositions.
A Compliant Virtue
	In many virtues, the claim about the standard view holds well enough.
	For the Moral Rule that we ought always to tell the truth, the virtue of truthfulness is perfectly adequate to satisfy the second and third theses: that the truthfulness is a disposition to tell the truth, making the duty to tell the truth easy for the person with the virtue of truthfulness.
Deviant Virtues
	298 „How accurate is the Standard View? Does it withstand scrutiny when applied to the three particular virtues.¾
		The virtue of benevolence
		The virtue of gratitude
		The virtue of self-respect
Deviant Virtues: Beneficience
	299 Beneficence is an imperfect duty giving us a certain latitude in actually acting on it. It does not actually tell us how much we are obligated to help, or when we must help.
	For a non-benevolent individual, helping a person who needs it is a calculation, but that calculation may ignore (because of the imperfect duty) a person we can help but choose not to. 
	However a person with the virtue of benevolence will help the person.
Deviant Virtues: Beneficience
	The virtue of benevolence in this case is a guide to the application of the rule. It is the primary reason for fulfilling the duty in terms of what might be called common sense.
	The duty of beneficence itself does not contain the guidance required, or the discernment to apply the moral rule.
Deviant Virtues: Gratitude
	300 On the standard view it should be possible to 
		formulate a „rule for conduct¾ obedience to which will fully satisfy the duty
		for persons who lack the virtue, to satisfy the duty (by obeying the rule from the motive of duty)
Deviant Virtues: Gratitude
	Even though you can formulate a rule for beneficence, to guide someone who is without the virtue to fulfill the requirements of it.
	However, to perform the duty of gratitude, one must be grateful. You can¼t create a rule that will make a person grateful.
	Duty cannot serve as a substitute motive without altering the nature of the action being performed.
Deviant Virtues: Gratitude
	It is not that one can not act in a thankful manner if one isn¼t thankful, but it is insincere.
	The duty of gratitude cannot be stated satisfactorily as a moral rule for action.
	The value of grateful acts is derived from the value of the virtue of gratitude and not conversely.
Deviant Virtues: Self-Respect
	The virtue of self-respect does not conform to the first thesis of the Standard view for the same reason that gratitude does not.
	An action exhibiting self-respect arises from the attitude of self-respect not from some duty.
	That duty of self-respect is explained as a duty to seek to cultivate the virtue of self-respect.
Deviant Virtues
	The duties of beneficence, gratitude and self respect are best interpreted not simply as duties to perform certain actions, but as duties to cultivate a virtue, to develop certain character traits.
Moral Rules & Virtues
	Neither moral rules nor virtues stand alone at the heart of moral theory.
	Though ethics is fundamentally about practice, that doesn¼t mean that attitude is secondary element in the equation.