After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory

by Alasdair MacIntyre

For Smith the virtues fall into two classes. There are on the one hand those three virtues which, if they are perfectly possessed, enable a man to exhibit perfectly virtuous behavior. ‘The man who acts according to the rules of perfect prudence, of strict justice, and of proper benevolence, may be said to be perfectly virtuous’ (Theory of Moral Sentiments VI. iii. 1). Notice of course that once again to be virtuous had been equated with rule-following. When Smith comes to deal with justice, he makes it a charge against ‘ancient moralists’ that we do not find ‘any attempt towards a particular enumeration of the rules of justice’. But on Smith’s view knowledge of what the rules are, whether the rules of justice or of prudence or of benevolence, is not sufficient to enable us to follow them; to do so we need another virtue of a very different kind, the Stoic virtue of self-command which enables us to control our passions when they distract us from what virtue requires.