Abstract

Examines and criticizes von Wright's attempt to distinguish virtues from skills, and to shape a new concept of a virtue. She points out that it will not help to connect skills particularly with activities as opposed to ends, and again that a concept of the virtues that links each virtue to the overcoming of a particular passion, as Von Wright suggests, excludes justice from the list. He also seems to err in ignoring Aristotle and Aquinas’ crucial insistence on the fact that skills differ from virtues in that it is possible to possess a skill but deliberately fail to exercise it, whereas a virtue necessarily ‘gives its use.’