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This article argues that Adam Smith’s moral theory is better understood as a contribution to virtue ethics rather than as a contribution to either of the other two rival schools of contemporary moral philosophy, utilitarianism or deontology. To demonstrate this, Ryan Hanley examines Smith’s understanding of the proper methods and ends of ethics, focusing particularly on his understanding of the place of rhetoric in ethics, and the role of ethics in educating characters rather than in mandating rules or precepts. On these grounds, it is concluded that Smith deserves to be regarded alongside Hutcheson and Hume as one of the eighteenth-century founders of contemporary virtue ethics, and that, like contemporary virtue ethicists, Smith is indebted to Aristotle and indeed might serve as a useful interlocutor in contemporary neo-Aristotelian debates.