 As will become clear in subsequent discussion here, one can employ virtue language with the appropriate qualifiers and at the same time acknowledge much of what the critics claim as insights of Confucian ethics: e.g., that the process of realizing the virtues characteristically takes place in relationship to others--those to whom one has responsibilities as a son or daughter or mother or father, for example--and that it can be part of one’s very identity to be a particular person’s son or daughter, mother or father. It is part of the Confucian vision of a life befitting human beings that it is a life of relationships marked by mutual care and respect, that one achieves fullest personhood that way. One achieves this in a manner that is particular to one’s circumstances, including the particular others with whom one most interacts. None of this is inconsistent with virtue characterizations in the broad sense (for an alternative role-ethic characterization of Confucian ethics that incorporates these insights in a different way, see Ames, 2011). 