Near the beginning of this book I suggested that the interminable and unsettlable character of so much contemporary moral debate arises from the variety of heterogeneous and incommensurable concepts which inform the major premises from which the protagonists in such debates argue. In this conceptual mélange there are to be found, jostling with such modern concepts as those of utility and rights, a variety of virtue concepts, functioning in a variety of different ways. What is lacking however is any clear consensus, either as to the place of virtue concepts relative to other moral concepts, or
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