For centuries, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics has been widely recognized as the definitive expression of the classical understanding of virtue and ethical training. Alisdair MacIntyre's (1984) influential After Virtue proposes the possibility of restoring the Aristotelian conception of virtue as a corrective to the regnant, but in his view increasingly discredited, utilitarian and subjectivist theories of ethics.(1) For MacIntyre, the classical view, with its emphasis on the nobility and inherent goodness of moral action, is superior to the crude self-interest that marks contemporary ethical theory. The understanding of virtue and ethics that MacIntyre opposes originates in ...