Abstract: As the core concept of virtue epistemology， intellectual virtue has two competitive interpretations-competence-virtue and character-virtue. The former argues that intellectual virtue is a stable and reliable cognitive ability such as perception， memory and reasoning; the latter regards it as acquired traits of character such as tenacity， intellectual courage and open-mindedness. There exists a perennial controversy in the academic community on which reveals the nature of intellectual virtue. In fact， the two explanations do not conflict in essence， which explore respectively two aspects of the unified intellectual virtue. The current debate is largely due to the fact that the different functions of the two types of intellectual virtue are not identified in the process of cognition， i.e.， competence-virtue explains low-level knowledge better while character-virtue is better suited for explaining high-level knowledge. They are synergically related and compatible with each other rather than in a life-or-death struggle.

Key words: virtue epistemology, intellectual virtue, competence-virtue, character-virtue, synergic relationship