Abstract

The author contends that the debate between the theological ethicists who champion an ethics of virtue and moral philosophers who support an ethics of duty (notably William K. Frankena) is much more than a disagreement about normative ethics. He attempts to clarify the nature of this debate and to turn it in a more useful direction by constructing comprehensive outline of Frankena's view of the conditions of moral reasoning and indicating where (and how) the points in dispute most naturally arise.