ABSTRACT
Let me begin by contrasting what I shall call the commonplace rhetorical usage of the virtue-words - ‘commonplace’, that is, in the contemporary public metropolitan cultures of the so-called advanced societies, such as our own - with the kind of meaning the virtue-words must be understood to have, if they are used to give expression to any tolerably systematic and coherent understanding of the virtues. Both those who judge some particular person to be courageous or generous or just or whatever (using those words in accordance with commonplace usage) and those who apparently judge similarly (using those very same words, but doing so in order to give expression to their own particular systematic and coherent understanding of the virtues) will of course do so on the basis of some set of actions by that person. And it may well be the case, indeed it often enough is the case, that it is on the basis of the very same set of actions, performed in some limited set of situations, that both parties judge that particular person courageous or generous or just. Because he or she on a limited, but sufficiently numerous, range of occasions has done particular brave or generous or just actions and has not performed any clearly cowardly or niggardly or unjust actions, a settled disposition so to act is ascribed. But what it is crucial to notice is that although both parties are ascribing a disposition, using the same words to do so, it is not the same disposition that is being ascribed. The same sentences are being employed, but the judgements to which they give expression are in fact different. Wherein does the difference lie?
