INTRODUCTION

Ancient virtue ethics assumes that all persons have a natural concern for their own life and well-being. It holds that the ability to lead a good life is grounded on certain excellent qualities and dispositions of one's character and intellect. Those qualities or dispositions are called aretai – ‘virtues’ as the term is traditionally if problematically translated. A crucial question for ancient virtue theory is: does the set of ‘virtues’ that enable a person to lead a good life have to include attitudes like justice and generosity? Or are the intelligent, self-controlled, resolute egoists who see other people as mere instruments, or obstacles, to their own well-being equally or even better suited to leading a good life?

The speech of Callicles in Plato's Gorgias is a famous and forceful defence of the attitude of moral egoism. A theoretical elaboration of the view that all human beings are ultimately egoists is set forth in Glaucon's speech in Plato's Republic 2. Aristotle follows Socrates' and Plato's footsteps in depreciating a sort of egoism that seeks fulfilment in the augmentation and gratification of bodily pleasures or the amassment of wealth and social prestige. He unequivocally affirms the value of virtues like justice and generosity and states that behaviour exhibiting those virtues has to be motivated by the acknowledgement of their value and, hence, is clearly different from a strategic pretence of justice or generosity.