A key area to explore is that politically we are frequently manipulated through applying to one of our concepts of virtue to choose something we may not have chosen had we been more wise to what was going on.
Maybe it was inevitable, given the role it has played as the curator of traditional values, that the Boy Scouts of America would find itself in the middle of this conflict: a symbol of virtue to some and something akin to a hate group to others.
As with Laches and Euthyphro, however, the inquiry has led to a suggestion that goes beyond defining one among a number of independent virtues to investigating something of unbounded ethical importance, the knowledge of good and evil.
The premise in this argument is highly controversial, and in fact many philosophers believe that something can be non-instrumentally good in virtue of its relation to something else.
The value attributed to the painting is one that it is said to have in virtue of its relation to something else that would supposedly be intrinsically good if it occurred, namely, the appreciation of its beauty).
Many other instances could be given of cases in which we are inclined to call something good in virtue of its relation to something else that is or would be intrinsically good, even though the relation in question is not a means-end relation.
"Form", "nature" and "essence" than, refer to something in virtue of the persistence of which an individual retains its identity.
Transparency in such matters, and the accountability that attaches to it, is always and only a virtue, never something to be feared.
But something like true virtue, namely love of honour, may lead to something like justice and peace, as it did in the Roman Republic (City of God, V.12).
In order to devise a collection of things, possible in themselves but existing, one must conceive of a collection rendered necessary by virtue of something external to it.
