This paper explores two objections to virtue ethics: the self-effacing objection, which holds that virtue ethics is problematic insofar as it presents a justification for the exercise of the virtues that cannot be appealed to as an agent’s motive for exercising them, and the self-centeredness objection, which holds that virtue ethics is egoistic and so fails to accommodate properly the sort of other-regarding concern that many take to be the distinctive aspect of a moral theory. I examine the relationship between these two objections as they apply to eudaimonistic virtue ethics. While defenders of eudaimonistic virtue ethics often appeal to self-effacement in order to deflect the self-centeredness objection, I argue that there is nothing in the structure of eudaimonistic virtue ethics that makes it problematically self-centered. Analysis of the self-centeredness objection shows that self-centeredness is problematic only on the assumption that the self is egoistic. Because eudaimonistic virtue ethics is predicated upon a non-egoistic understanding of human agency, it is not problematically self-centered. As a result, there is no reason for it to be self-effacing.
