Final answer:
Contemporary virtue ethicists believe that ethics should encompass character traits, and recognize the role of cultural and historical contexts (pluralism and relativism), as well as subjective factors like relationships and emotional responses (like empathy and compassionate virtues).
Step-by-step explanation:
Contemporary virtue ethicists maintain that a full-blown ethics must take into account various aspects that contribute to an individual's well-being and moral cultivation. Unlike approaches that prioritize a single principle for moral guidance
such as utilitarianism's consequence-based framework or deontology's rule-based system, virtue ethics emphasizes the importance of character and the multitude of virtues an individual can develop. This character-centered approach suggests that right actions emerge from having the right dispositions or character traits.
Pluralism and relativism are also significant because they recognize the diversity of values in different cultures and historical periods. An ethical framework that includes a pluralist perspective acknowledges that moral beliefs are often influenced by a variety of factors, including cultural and historical contexts, rather than being absolute.