The very idea of a flourishing life is a normative concept. That of course was the original question: what are the standards by which we ought to live our lives? The virtue ethicist told us that we could avoid this question by focusing on the kinds of persons we ought to be. If you asked him how we tell what kinds of persons we ought to be, he would say to live in accordance with the virtues. Then however, if you ask what the virtues are, it is likely you would be told that we can determine that by appealing to this notion of a flourishing life--only it turns out that the flourishing life assumes a set of values, a set of standards already!
So, appealing to the flourishing life only returns us to the original question: which moral standards should we adopt?
There are still two other ways that the virtue theorist might try to determine what the virtues are. Fourthly, he might simply appeal to a formula like the categorical imperative or the utilitarian calculus. On this theory, he might argue that if we want to know what character traits are the moral ones, we just ask which ones maximise happiness and minimise harm for the greatest number. But this answer, only returns the virtue theorist to the very rule-based theories he tried to resist earlier. On this account virtue ethics just collapses into the rule-based systems.
The final way in which the virtue theorist might try to determine what the virtues are that the good man can tell what to do in a morally complicated situation. This is because his habits not only internalise the rules but also give him a special ability to know what is morally appropriate independent of any rational calculus like Kant's.
This could be called a form of moral intuitionism: a special faculty of moral intuition develops within a good man. This may seem plausible, since you might notice in your own life that doing what is right not only makes doing what is right in the future easier, but it also seems to make it easier to figure out what is the right thing to do.
Despite all these criticisms and problems that can be found, there are also a good number of strengths, for instance; Virtue theorists have noticed a couple things about human experience that are well worth noting. In the first place, they have understood the need to distinguish good people from legalists. Just because someone follows rules does not mean he is a good person. Good people act from proper motives and they desire the good life. But theories like utilitarianism tell us next to nothing about how to form these motives and desires. Of course, they were never meant to do this, so this is a bit of a straw man criticism; they were only designed to tell us what the good life is, not to motivate us to want it.
But motivating people to desire goodness, to internalise it is very much within the interest of educators. The virtue theorists at least talk about this important subject. Virtue theorists like St. Thomas Aquinas noticed long ago that the world works in a funny way. When we do things that are good, even when we do not much want to, the very act of doing the good thing often alters our desires so that by the end of the action, we begin to form an attraction to it, i.e. the good action is its own reward.
Doing good deeds, even grudgingly, can often produce within us a kind of satisfaction that is worth more than certain pleasures.
Similarly, in moral action, we can internalise moral principles simply by doing the morally good deed and through the action itself come to understand its value and begin to desire it.
However, virtue theory offers a great deal to moral psychology -it tells us how we in fact learn moral principles. This means that virtue ethics is less a normative theory of what we ought to do than a descriptive account of the limits and capabilities of human beings. If humans are creatures that tend toward habituation, then moral educators would do well to heed this fact in developing a moral curriculum. Then it also raises questions about whether calling virtue theory "ethics" is even appropriate. Since virtue theories fail to offer defensible moral norms that are distinguishable from their normative rivals, virtue theories are not really ethical theories at all.
