In this paper, the author tries to reconstruct a systematic theory of the traditional Confucianism from the perspective of virtue ethics, and to explore the possibility and properness of this virtuebased Confucianism as philosophical foundation of contemporary character education. The chief strategy of this article is to enumerate common features of Western Virtue Ethics, then check if these features appear in Confucianism. Based on the comparison of Chinese Confucianism with Virtue Ethics, we discover that Confucianism shares lots of common features with virtue ethics. Therefore, we can conclude that it is possible to build up a virtuebased Confucian ethics, and use it for the philosophical foundation of character education for the contemporary Chinese Societies.

Virtue; Virtue ethics; Confucian ethics; Character Education