Abstract: In recent decades,virtue ethics has been reviving in a flourishing manner in the English world,which challenges the dominance of deontology and utilitarianism and consequently helps to form a tripod-like situation of contemporary ethics. Scholars engaging in comparative study start to explore the resources of virtue ethics in their own philosophical traditions. Especially,a large number of works on Confucian virtue ethics have appeared in the last decade. Of course,there are also some objections arise. In his recent book The Good is One,Its Manifestations Many,Robert Neville suspects the "quite popular view" of "fruitfully regarding Confucianism as virtue ethics". He argues that virtue ethics contains some defects that Confucian ethics does not contain on the one hand and Confucian ethics has merits that virtue ethics lacks on the other. This paper argues that Confucian ethics is virtue ethics by demonstrating Confucian ethics have some features characterized by virtue ethics. Moreover,virtue ethics does not have the defects that Neville mentions, while it also has the merits that Neville attributes to Confucian ethics. Therefore,we can legitimately regard Confucian ethics as virtue ethics.

Key words: Confucian ethics, virtue ethics, Robert Neville