Virtue ethics and an ethics of care: complementary or in conflict?

this paper compares and contrasts virtue ethics and care ethics to determine their mutual relation. it is argued that there is one tradition within virtue ethics that emphasises that virtue is knowledge and also focuses on direct altruism. there is no opposition between that form of virtue ethics and ethics of care. furthermore, there are principled objections to generalising the necessarily asymmetric relations of an ethic of care to the case of justice as reciprocal fairness.