A virtue ethic is one in which there is a multi-dimensional set of criteria for good comportment which naturally arrange themselves into a system or hierarchy. This corresponds to the idea of a soul with its own structure and purpose, since there needs to be a point of application for such an accounting. Every good naturally also having its negative aspect, its mode of neglect or transgression. A system of this kind may be directed towards the social and be more or less supported by existing structure of the social, but the larger structure in which it is embedded need not at all be realised in the world. The need for an ethical accountability and the embedding in a larger structure holds true even in the vastly different case of a consequentialist ethic of care and harm such as is becoming more prevalent today. What is different is the status of the soul, which in the latter case can be almost entirely dissolved. This is what the system based on notions like karma resolves into. Comportment matters little, the ultimate value is in the consequences radiating from any action and the accounting for this takes place only in the largest possible context. It is not obedience to divine law which guides your actions here but an intuition of the whole in which your very agency is an illusion. While seeming more enlightened this latter understanding proves to be subjectivist and self-contradictory.