ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that virtue ethics is primary and can be extended from the sphere of personal fulfilment and interpersonal relationships to that of public and civic life. The chapter provides the context in which virtues relating to self-care, to interpersonal relationships and also to life in civil society can be felt as normative. Accordingly, virtue theory can embrace not only the commitments of character that constitute virtue, but also the requirements of justice that give form to those commitments. Modern societies pose a different problem. In nation-states and other large and impersonal societies social norms cannot be based on ethical face-to-face relationships between people. The chapter articulates the ethical aim that Ricoeur posits as the internal fulfilment of human existence, and split it into three levels. It suggests that the individual pursuit of eudaimoni, the social and community-based pursuit of philia, and the social and political pursuit of justice are equiprimordial goals inherent in human life.
