It would be just as ridiculous to order someone to be virtuous as it would be to order them to love us. For while it is always possible to command and even control an individual's actions through the use of reward and punishment, it is not possible, in the same sense, for anyone to command the dispositions which are crucial to virtue. Any attempt to inculcate virtue by reward and punishment would have to rely on dispositions which are different, and perhaps even contrary to the virtue one is seeking to impose. In short, virtue cannot be legislated.
It is equally the case that virtue cannot be codified or reduced to the class of right actions, for it is an obvious point that the "right" action may always be performed for the wrong reason. If I give money to charity my action may certainly help to relieve suffering, but it cannot be considered a "virtuous" act if it was done primarily to impress my friends.
This non-coincidence of virtue and moral law might lead one to suppose that virtue is itself a basic category of moral experience. For in principle at least, virtue is never constituted by the actions which are said to exhibit it. Thus, although historically most theories of ethics have made the concept of virtue derivative, by identifying it with whatever quality helps us to obey the moral law, it is perhaps possible, or even necessary, to consider virtue as a basic and original "given" which cannot be codified or legislated by any principles of moral law. * I would like to thank Patrick Grim, Lee Miller, and Dennis Rohatyn for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.