Journal of Sociology Social Welfare It is about making the right decision and doing the right thing The NasW Code of Ethics, like the deontological codes(or codes of duty)of other professions, is an important tool for identify ing social work's core values, summarizing broad principles, and establishing specific ethical standards to guide practice These are standards to which NASW expects the general public to hold the profession accountable and to which, in principle, it holds its own members accountable--helping profession als identify and resolve ethical dilemmas, and socializing new practitioners(NASW, 1999) So much is this approach to professional ethics taken for granted that it is easy to overlook how different it is from the traditional understanding of ethics, no less in the classical and Christian West from Aristotle to Aquinas than in the east in he other main religions and ethical traditions of the world (Peterson Seligman, 2004). In that older view, ethics is fun damentally about happiness rather than obligation, and about character and the virtues rather than about resolving moral dilemmas(MacIntyre, 2006; Pinckaers, 1995). This is as true for applied professional ethics, such as those of Hippocrates in medicine, as of general philosophical ethics(Pellegrino Thomasma, 1993; Pellegrino, 2008) This article draws on classical, medieval, and contempo- rary virtue-oriented ethics to address those habits of heart and mind(Tocqueville, 2000)critical for ethical practice. It analy- es the potential of what has come to be called virtue ethics, and in particular the classical Aristotelian-Thomist tradition of ethics(Aristotle, 2002; Aquinas, 1981, 2005)as developed by MacIntyre (1984, 1990)and other contemporary nec Aristotelian or virtue-ethicists( Crisp Slote, 1997; Darway 2003), to guide our understanding of the social work profession and the dispositions that its practice requires and develops Ethics' Loss of Character After the death of Aquinas in 1274, both philosophical ethics and moral theology underwent a fundamental shift away from character, virtues, and habits of the heart to a na rower focus on the rightness or wrongness of specific actions (Pinckaers, 1995). The result in modern professional as well84 Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare It is about making the right decision and doing the right thing. The NASWCode of Ethics, like the deontological codes (or codes of duty) of other professions, is an important tool for identify￾ing social work's core values, summarizing broad principles, and establishing specific ethical standards to guide practice. These are standards to which NASW expects the general public to hold the profession accountable and to which, in principle, it holds its own members accountable—helping profession￾als identify and resolve ethical dilemmas, and socializing new practitioners (NASW, 1999). So much is this approach to professional ethics taken for granted that it is easy to overlook how different it is from the traditional understanding of ethics, no less in the classical and Christian West from Aristotle to Aquinas than in the East in the other main religions and ethical traditions of the world (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). In that older view, ethics is fun￾damentally about happiness rather than obligation, and about character and the virtues rather than about resolving moral dilemmas (Maclntyre, 2006; Pinckaers, 1995). This is as true for applied professional ethics, such as those of Hippocrates in medicine, as of general philosophical ethics (Pellegrino & Thomasma, 1993; Pellegrino, 2008). This article draws on classical, medieval, and contempo￾rary virtue-oriented ethics to address those habits of heart and mind (Tocqueville, 2000) critical for ethical practice. It analy￾ses the potential of what has come to be called virtue ethics, and in particular the classical Aristotelian-Thomist tradition of ethics (Aristotle, 2002; Aquinas, 1981, 2005) as developed by Maclntyre (1984, 1990) and other contemporary neo￾Aristotelian or virtue-ethicists (Crisp & Slote, 1997; Darwall, 2003), to guide our understanding of the social work profession and the dispositions that its practice requires and develops. Ethics' Loss of Character After the death of Aquinas in 1274, both philosophical ethics and moral theology underwent a fundamental shift away from character, virtues, and habits of the heart to a nar￾rower focus on the rightness or wrongness of specific actions (Pinckaers, 1995). The result in modern professional as well