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On MacIntyre's 'After Virtue'
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12100 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
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12 / 1987 |
5,993 Words |
| Author
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Joseph Boyle
Joseph Boyle is professor of philosophy at St. Michael's
College of the University of Toronto. |
No single person has contributed as much to the current revival of interest in the virtues as Alasdair MacIntyre. MacIntyre is an English philosopher who now teaches at Vanderbilt. Although trained and accomplished in the techniques of twentieth-century analytical philosophy, MacIntyre brings to his discussion of moral life a breadth of learning, particularly about the history and development of moral ideas, which allows him to break out of the somewhat narrow confines of contemporary moral philosophy.
His great book After Virtue deals extensively with the technical issues of moral philosophy. This is because MacIntyre is convinced that these issues are intimately related to the actual moral predicament in which we now find ourselves. Philosophers' work is considered, not as an isolated, independent area of scholarly inquiry, but as a reflection and articulation of the actual moral realities of the philosophers' society. By considering the central issues in contemporary moral philosophy, MacIntyre hopes to isolate the salient characteristics of morality today, to trace their development, to determine what has gone wrong, and to suggest a remedy.
So MacIntyre's concern is not primarily moral philosophy but the personal and social reality of moral life and discourse. Given this concern, it is not surprising that the work of artists and literary critics, social scientists, and historians is extensively used.
This unique approach to the central issues of moral philosophy no doubt explains part of the astonishing impact of MacIntyre's book since its appearance in 1981. Unlike most books by moral philosophers--John Rawls' The Theory of Justice published a decade earlier is the only other exception that comes to mind--After Virtue continues to command the attention not only of moral philosophers and those in allied areas of inquiry but also of the general educated public as well. Here is an academic philosopher talking about reality, about us, and about our predicament, not just about technical arguments and refined distinctions.
What MacIntyre says about us is anything but reassuring: Our moral arguments are interminable; our moral utterances and social institutions are nothing more than unjustified exercises of the will to power; the central forms of our social relationships are based not on humanly enriching practices but on instrumental devices like the free market and are dominated by individualism and acquisitiveness. Indeed, not only are the virtues lacking, the integral substance of morality has been fragmented and in
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