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Buddhist ethics shares with  Plato a rationalist orientation in the weak but crucial sense that a  correct view of reality is the final goal, and that seeking and  attaining this goal is transformative. This implies a further  similarity, namely that the focus of ethical concern is on  transformation of view, from which transformation of character (or  experience) follows. Choice, deliberation, action, reason happen too far  downstream, and too much simply as the result of transformation of view  and character, for them to be of much theoretical interest in their own  right. Buddhist ethics further shares with Plato a sublime indifference  to human beings becoming ‘good things of their kind’. Normativity is  not grounded in our nature, nor in a metaphysics of natural kinds. While  correctly understanding our human condition may be of vital practical  value in appreciating the manifestation of ultimate reality in the  everyday, or in motivating our concerted efforts to achieve this  understanding, it does not provide a goal to aim at. This is an  overlooked reason why 'virtue ethics’ also fits ill as a classification  of Buddhist ethics. It holds us, as does Plato’s ethics, to a much more  ambitious ethical ideal than virtue ethics can conceive, and this makes a  difference for how seeking that ideal transforms us.