The Circularity and Insularity of Virtue Ethics

• Agent-basing as the answer to circularity.
• Circularity problem: 'if the rightness of acts is determined by reference to righ action, then we have a circle' 
  

Sidgwick's Lawyer

• Motivated by malice to prosecute
• But prosecution also happens to be his duty
• Is it right for him to do his professional duty, if he does so out of malice?
• Isn't the agent-based virtue ethicist committed to saying that the lawyer acts wrongly, given that right action is determined by right motive, which he lacks?
• Response: can suggest that failure to perform duty is in itself evidence of poor motivation; so in performing his duty the lawyer would be doing the right thing??
• Problem: can't appeal to duty in every.
• The major problem is that virtue ethics cannot explain why particular actions should be performed.
  
• Without an indepedent specification of duty or right action…