Strength is a virtue (2)

I think the big reason we resist the idea of strength being a virtue is that it so easily submits to comparison. Dennis is stronger than me is an easily made and easily testable assertion. It is not nearly so easy to test the proposition that I am more prudent than Dennis. We say these things to be sure but there is always room for discussion whereas five minutes in the weight room will forever establish the fact of Dennis being stronger.

Here I think MacIntyre and others are avoiding an inescapable truth about virtue. That is, once we take virtue ethics seriously it follows that we must take qualitative assessments of people as people seriously. To take MacIntyre's own example of the sea captain, once we say someone is a sea captain then it follows that he or she ought to be able to do what a sea captain is supposed to do. Yes! And it also follows that some sea captains will be better at it than others.

Similarly, once we accept that being a man or being a woman carries ideas of virtue with it then we have to admit that some men are better at being men than other men and some women are better at being women than other women. Of course, the only odd thing about this is that we find it odd: outside of polite intellectual discourse, every one knows this.