 In recent decades various philosophers and theologians have proposed that ethics done well is virtue ethics, not an ethics of rules and principles. An ethics of the latter kind is denounced as legalistic. As should be clear from the foregoing, Aquinas rejects the proposed contrast and gives systematic prominence both to standards, such as principles and rules, and to virtues. He holds, in effect, that they are interdefined. Nor does he have any time for the view that there are no exceptionless moral norms and that moral norms or other standards are no more than a kind of anticipation, shadow or approximation of the judgments which in each situation need to be made by a person of virtue, and which could never exclude in advance any kind of act as always wrongful by reason of its object and regardless of its further intentions or the circumstances of the situation. On the contrary, he holds that no human act is morally good (right, in the sense of not wrong) unless it is in line with love of self and neighbor (and thus with respect for the basic aspects of the wellbeing of each and all human beings) not only (i) in the motives or intentions with which it is chosen, and (ii) in the appropriateness of the circumstances, but also (iii) in its object (more precisely the object, or closest-in intention of the choosing person) (see 2.1.1 above). This is the primary sense of the axiom he frequently articulates by quoting an old tag: bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu (good from an unflawed set of contributing factors, bad from any defect in the set). That is, there is a fundamental asymmetry between moral good and moral evil – a notion very foreign to any version of utilitarian or post-utilitarian consequentialist or “proportionalist” ethics.