MacIntyre, Alasdair Essay ⋆ Criminal Justice Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Alasdair MacIntyre (1929 – ) is a Scottish philosopher with a long and distinguished record of publishing within philosophy. His most renowned work is After Virtue, which was first published in 1981. A revised second edition was published in 1985, which includes an additional postscript answering some of the criticisms raised against the first edition. These responses are developed in subsequent publications. MacIntyre has been an influential thinker within moral philosophy, especially since the publication of After Virtue, which explores three aspects of his moral philosophy: his criticisms of the Enlightenment project, which he perceives as having failed to present a coherent understanding of moral issues, and his preference for the moral writings of Aristotle, especially as developed by the 13th-century Dominican priest Thomas Aquinas; his arguments against the individualism of liberal moral philosophy and the consequent association of his work with communitarianism; and his arguments concerning what he perceives as the emotivism of modern moral philosophy and its inability to resolve moral disputes through rationality.

Perhaps the most telling influence After Virtue has had upon moral philosophy has been reinvigorating an interest in Aristotle’s virtue ethics. MacIntyre contrasts Aristotelian virtues favorably against both the deontological approach to ethics inspired by the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, and the consequentialist ethical reasoning favored by the utilitarian thinkers in Britain at the end of the 18th and throughout the 19th centuries (e.g., Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill). MacIntyre argues that in both of its dominant guises, this modern moral philosophy is incoherent and fragmented, and he is highly critical of the Enlightenment for failing to provide an intelligible understanding of the moral thinking from previous times. MacIntyre is regarded as a leading authority in Aristotelian ethics and Thomism, the ethics associated with Thomas Aquinas.

Central to MacIntyre’s criticism of modern moral philosophy is its lack of historical perspective. He argues that analysis of moral philosophy is increasingly divorced from the time in which it is produced. MacIntyre argues that moral philosophy today treats thinkers of the past as if they were dealing with the same issues that preoccupy individuals’ minds today. He begins After Virtue with an imagined apocalyptic future in which only very limited written evidence of scientific theories and discoveries has survived. He asks how people of the future would be able to make sense of today’s scientific understanding from such limited fragments. He suggests that the fragmented knowledge that would ensue is analogous to the contemporary state of modern moral philosophy.

An example of the a historical approach to the analysis of moral philosophy is provided by MacIntyre in his earlier writings in relation to the concept of duty. MacIntyre argues in A Short History of Ethics that current understanding of duty is dominated by the writings of Immanuel Kant. Duty is thus conceived of as a sense of obligation that is abstracted from any particular activity. So, today people do not talk about duty in moral terms in relation to actually performing a specific duty, but rather as a moral characteristic of being a good person. He suggests further that when people discuss moral debates found within the Socratic dialogues they assume this notion of duty was prevalent among the ancient Greeks. However, he argues that in fact the understanding of duty post-Kant would have no meaning in ancient Greece or indeed in other pre-Enlightenment languages and cultures.

Likewise, MacIntyre is critical of the extent to which modern moral philosophy abstracts the individual from real-life examples in order to discuss ethical issues. MacIntyre is much more concerned with the Aristotelian approach of understanding moral questions by situating the individual within real communities, performing real tasks and real duties. Here, morality is not abstracted from what a person does but is embedded within that person’s contribution to the community. After Virtue is thus seen as part of the critical responses to John Rawls’s seminal 1971 text A Theory of Justice. Rawls has been widely acknowledged as having a significant influence on the articulation of liberal moral philosophy. Against the overwhelmingly positive reception of Rawls, MacIntyre belonged to a small, but highly influential, number of dissenting voices. It is in this respect that MacIntyre is often labeled as a communitarian and associated with others, such as Michael Sandel, Michael Walzer, and Charles Taylor, under that label.

A final feature of After Virtue worthy of note is an argument concerning the failure of rationality to resolve contemporary moral disputes. MacIntyre provides examples such as abortion to show that contemporary moral debates are noisy but totally lacking in any ability to resolve disputes. He suggests that moral arguments are presented as rational and impersonal but are in fact little more than personal preferences. MacIntyre refers to the culture of modern moral philosophy as emotivism, which cannot provide the necessary common ground to decide on disputes between different moral arguments that are each presented as logically valid arguments but premised upon different conceptions of humanity. For MacIntyre, what is absent today is a shared notion of purpose as captured in the Aristotelian concept of telos. Toward the end of the postscript in the revised second edition of After Virtue, MacIntyre reminds his readers that the central theme of his work is the argument that the Aristotelian moral tradition has not been bettered and is therefore deserving of more attention.

Bibliography:

Herchold, Jan Joseph. “Alasdair Macintyre’s Rejection of Liberal Modernity as a Political Theory of Negation.” Conference Papers—New England Political Science Association (2012). Academic Search Premier.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue. 2nd rev. ed. London: Gerald Duckworth, 1985.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988
Soniewicka, Marta. “Patriotism and Justice in the Global Dimension.” A Conflict of Virtues?” Eidos, v.14 (2011).

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