Ab stract In eval u at ing the mer its and short com ings of vir tue eth ics I fo cus on some cen tral dif fer ences be tween vir tue eth ics and ri val the o ries such as deontology and util i tar i an ism. Vir tue eth ics does not pre scribe strict rules of con duct. In stead, the vir tue eth i cal ap proach can be un der stood as an in vi tation to search for stan dards, as op posed to strict rules, that ought to guide the con duct of our in di vid ual lives. This re quires a par tic u lar

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... thod. The im portance of this ap proach in pres ent times will be come clear when we in ves tigate the re la tion be tween vir tue eth ics and postmodernity. In our postmodern age moral con cepts are no lon ger per ceived as de riv ing their mean ing from larger frame works. In stead, their mean ings are perceived as be ing de rived from the con tin gen cies that de fine our par tic u lar existences. Thus on go ing grass roots moral en gage ment is re quired, and vir tue eth ics is the ap pro pri ate moral frame work for do ing this. This re sults in a broad en ing of ra tio nal ity inso far as the full rich ness of our sit u ated lives are fac tored into our ac counts of ra tio nal ity. At the same time vir tue eth ics pre vents rel a tiv ism, mainly because it does jus tice to the so cial embeddedness of hu man ac tiv i ties. In or der to il lus trate the vir tue eth i cal ap proach I will dis cuss two key con cepts in our moral vo cab u lary: re spon si bil ity and in teg rity. We will see how these ba sic con cepts can be prop erly un der stood only if one takes into con sid er ation the con tin gen cies, in her ent par a doxes and ten sions in hu man life.