ABSTRACT
This chapter distinguishes and advances four conceptions of virtue according to how moral rules and virtue interact in a virtuous person's moral reasoning processes: absolute conception, pro tanto conception, prima facie conception, and particularist conception. It argues that this uncodifiability conclusion only obtains under McDowell's specific conception of virtues. The chapter also argues that McDowell's rule-following attack as well as two other attacks on the absolute conception can be effectively parried, and that there is a good case, at least a prima facie one, it can make for the superiority of the pro tanto conception over McDowell's conception. It articulates what they are and make a prima facie case for them. The chapter concludes that although virtue, in McDowell's specific conception of it, cannot be codified, there are at least two prima facie plausible conceptions of virtue under which the requirements of virtue might well be codifiable.
