Introduction

I concluded Chapter 3 with the suggestion that the point of ethics was not only to achieve self-fulfilment and self-realization (which are possible interpretations of Aristotle's notion of eudaimoniā as well as of Nietzsche's will to power) but also to fulfil our primordial mode of being as social beings who care about, and are responsible for, others. This suggestion certainly enhances the Aristotelian framework of virtue ethics in that it embraces concern for others more fully than Aristotle had done himself, but it still confines itself to those others with whom I have direct and friendly contact. Levinas had spoken of the face-to-face relationship, and Aristotle's account of philia, which is often translated as “friendship”, also stays within this ambit. It describes the nature and bases of those relationships that are available to people in communities in which everyone enjoys some face-to-face relations with others: relations ranging from those of mutual usefulness and pleasure, to those of close friendship based on character.

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. They must be based on principles that everyone can accept on the basis of a public discourse adhering to standards of impartiality, objectivity and rationality. Rather than adhering to the norms of philia or love and caring between individuals as shaped by tradition, they must adhere to the norms of justice and of morality as articulated in terms that can be universalized.