1020 Graham McBeath and Stephen A. Webb guage of citizenship, individual responsibility and the idea of a public ethics. Glossy HMSO documents have invoked phrases such as best practice which reflect"inclu- sivist' ideas of participation, commitment and, in effect, the making of a common wealth. If we listen carefully to these statements we may faintly hear a language of virtue that commends the measured comportment of ones qualities of self into form of social relations and the public sphere, and which if cultivated may lead to a moral society The relevance to social work should be fairly clear. Such an ethics gives moral meaning to modes of practice in everyday life whether in personal or professional settings. The practice of virtue developed through experience, reflection and circum spection--is the very stuff of good social work. These situated factors provide cri- teria for a profoundly human moral theory that is not perfectionist in its ambition but rather is defensible in terms of the 'good enough. This is precisely because the ructure of human encounter, of setting, and of policy horizons are variable and dynamic. Only in a static world is perfection possible, and of all worlds the social york world is no utopia. Thus virtue ethics may fit well with a field of activity accountable to time, change, accident and flexibility. Herewith our reasons for giving another outing to this most ancient and contemporary account of moral life. The criticism that a virtue ethics cannot adequately be applied to moral problems of the what ought I to do in this case? type points up a strength for our purposes, namely that at a time when social work aims to become more prescriptive and criteria-lec a theory of moral action rooted in the development of persons-as-subjective-agents is, perhaps, to be welcomed (Louden, 1997, p 184). In this sense, virtue ethics may be seen as partial but revitalizing in its focus upon the virtues of the social worker and not just of the work done. The former should not be isolated from the latter any more than a role can be performed in isolation from the abilities and qualities of the ctor. Doing a task well is not merely a matter of rule-following: expressed in it are the skills and virtues of persons. This point may be used against the mantra of good practice found in training manuals which tend to see the practitioner qua person as a mere cypher. Virtue ethics, then, may not tell us what must be done in this or that case to satisfy an image of social work as a moral enterprise; rather virtue ethics can be used to offer an account of the modes of moral existence shaping the being of a good social worker. More simply then, the basic question is not what is good social work, but rather what is a good social worker? Having sketched out the position of virtue ethics with regard to the history of ethics and social work values and practice, for the rest of this article we propose to outline the character and context of Aristotles notion of virtue to review some of the main contributions to recent work on virtue and then explore some of the ways which these can show how a virtuous disposition can be understood to be at the centre of agency-based social work Aristotelian virtue ethics Essentially, for virtue ethics, a good act is good because it results character that is intrinsically going to perform an action in line with1020 Graham McBeath and Stephen A. Webb guage of citizenship, individual responsibility and the idea of a public ethics. Glossy HMSO documents have invoked phrases such as ‘best practice’ which reflect ‘inclu￾sivist’ ideas of participation, commitment and, in effect, the making of a common￾wealth. If we listen carefully to these statements we may faintly hear a language of virtue that commends the measured comportment of ones qualities of self into forms of social relations and the public sphere, and which if cultivated may lead to a moral society. The relevance to social work should be fairly clear. Such an ethics gives moral meaning to modes of practice in everyday life whether in personal or professional settings. The practice of virtue developed through experience, reflection and circum￾spection—is the very stuff of good social work. These situated factors provide cri￾teria for a profoundly human moral theory that is not perfectionist in its ambition, but rather is defensible in terms of the ‘good enough’. This is precisely because the structure of human encounter, of setting, and of policy horizons are variable and dynamic. Only in a static world is perfection possible, and of all worlds the social work world is no utopia. Thus virtue ethics may fit well with a field of activity accountable to time, change, accident and flexibility. Herewith our reasons for giving another outing to this most ancient and contemporary account of moral life. The criticism that a virtue ethics cannot adequately be applied to moral problems of the ‘what ought I to do in this case?’ type points up a strength for our purposes, namely that at a time when social work aims to become more prescriptive and criteria-led, a theory of moral action rooted in the development of persons-as-subjective-agents is, perhaps, to be welcomed (Louden, 1997, p.184). In this sense, virtue ethics may be seen as partial but revitalizing in its focus upon the virtues of the social worker and not just of the work done. The former should not be isolated from the latter any more than a role can be performed in isolation from the abilities and qualities of the actor. Doing a task well is not merely a matter of rule-following; expressed in it are the skills and virtues of persons. This point may be used against the mantra of ‘good practice’ found in training manuals which tend to see the practitioner qua person as a mere cypher. Virtue ethics, then, may not tell us what must be done in this or that case to satisfy an image of social work as a moral enterprise; rather virtue ethics can be used to offer an account of the modes of moral existence shaping the being of a good social worker. More simply then, the basic question is not what is good social work, but rather what is a good social worker? Having sketched out the position of virtue ethics with regard to the history of ethics and social work values and practice, for the rest of this article we propose to outline the character and context of Aristotle’s notion of virtue, to review some of the main contributions to recent work on virtue and then explore some of the ways in which these can show how a virtuous disposition can be understood to be at the centre of agency-based social work. Aristotelian virtue ethics Essentially, for virtue ethics, a good act is good because it results froma good character that is intrinsically going to performan action in line with one or more