ABSTRACT
Just as the Aristotelian development of virtue ethics worked in a framework of human activity considered as part of an organic biological whole, so there is a significant aspect of the present discussion of virtue ethics which should be situated in terms of some recent developments in biological theory. While a number of the authors to be cited do not so explicitly deal with an ethics of virtue as such, the kinds of ethical approach taken are in many ways compatible with this ethical point of view. This is most important in the field of medical ethics where biology permeates all ethical decision making.
