Yet another crucial notion, for the sake of understanding virtue, is 'human flourishing.' Anscombe is doubtful we will be able to reach a satisfactory understanding of this notion.
James Hillman, a psychoanalyst and student of C.G. Jung, famously writes about the fallacy of valorizing growth for the sake of growth as a virtue in itself.
For a tradition of ethical thought from Aristotle and Aquinas to Hegel and Marx, human self-fulfilment springs from the practice of virtue, and this happens purely for its own sake.
He is, accordingly, rejecting the thought that morality requires us to sacrifice our own virtue for the sake of promoting it in others.
He says that theoretical wisdom produces happiness by being a part of virtue (1144a3 6), and that practical wisdom looks to the development of theoretical wisdom, and issues commands for its sake (1145a8 11).
But commonsense seems to accord moral significance to special relationships considered for their own sake, not in virtue of the opportunities that they afford.
Mr. Khodorkovsky is no paragon of virtue.
Hers is a story of virtue victorious.
Assurances of virtue are irrelevant.
They were visionaries of virtue.
