 As indicated in the introduction to this entry, a renewed philosophical interest in questions of virtue and character was indirectly the result of the publication in 1971 of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice. In contrast to many of his contemporaries who focused on meta-ethical questions and the meaning of moral terms, Rawls (1921–2002) moved moral and political philosophy in a practical direction and stimulated modern philosophers to explore the psychological grounding of good moral character. Early in Part II of A Theory of Justice, Rawls makes what he calls a “perfectly obvious” point – that the social system shapes the wants and aspirations that its citizens come to have. It determines “in part the sort of persons they want to be as well as the sort of persons they are” (1999a, 229). These points, Rawls claims, have always been recognized. 