Abstract
The paper tracks the influence of Wittgenstein‘s philosophy on the post-war British ethics through the key ethical problems of moral rule and acting on such moral rule. An important turn was caused by a massive critique of the modern „law” conception of ethics that focussed on a narrow concept of moral obligation in which moral action becomes modelled as guidance by an objectively given law that is being externally enforced on the will.
In opposition to the modern one that is narrowly centered on episodic action, the revived ancient ethical paradigm starts with the investigation of the good life the realisation of which needs good character. Moral action is thus explained on the background of a virtuous character that provides for moral motivation.
Two wittgensteinian sub-streams of virtue ethics are introduced in the paper: the first one works out the aristotelian virtue of „prudence” (the main rational virtue), the second one draws on the platonic thesis of one single virtue.