The historical philosophical sources of the renaissance of the concept of value

Concomitant to the renaissance of the concept of virtue in contemporary mor al philosophy was the return to the traditional theories of virtue. The aut hor offers a comparison of the theories of virtue with Aristotle, Spinoza a nd Hume, focusing on two questions: First, what do such diverse conceptions as Aristotle's eudaimonism, Spinoza's ethical rationalism and Hume's theor y of moral sense have in common? Her argument is, that in spite of differen t principles and different conceptual means these conceptions could be cove red by the same moral-philosophical tradition in which that, what ought to be (the desired) is not strictly separated from that, what is (from man's a ctual being). Thus the good and the virtue are not seen as divergent object ives or two mutually alienated worlds-as the Kantian tradition later tried to suggest. The second question concerns some of the specific incentives of the contemporary theories of virtue, especially the concept of character a nd its philosophical interpretation.