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Alasdair Macintyre: After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory (1981)

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Alasdair Macintyre: After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory (1981) ALASDAIR MACINTYRE: AFTER VIRTUE: A STUDY IN MORAL THEORY (1981) Alasdair MacIntyre’s modern classic of virtue ethics seeks to diagnose the failures of contemporary moral philosophy and vindicate an ancient moral tradition: Aristotelian ethics. Through historical and sociological inquiry, MacIntyre describes the shortcomings of modern ethics and advances his own Aristotelian theory, one centered on virtue rather than rules. Specifically, MacIntyre argues that morality is only intelligible by reference to a defined end, and virtues are the means to such an end. He proposes an three-tiered account of the virtues situated in (1) practices, (2) narratives, and (3) traditions (numbered accordingly below). MacIntyre concludes that the moral prospects for modern society at large are dismal and argues for a return to small-scale communities of shared moral ends. CHAPTER 1 – A DISQUIETING SUGGESTION • Modern moral philosophy is in a state of grave disorder • History should guide this philosophical inquiry CHAPTER 2 – THE NATURE OF MORAL DISAGREEMENT TODAY AND THE CLAIMS OF EMOTIVISM • Modern moral disagreements cannot be resolved because rival moral theories feature incommensurable concepts o There is no way to rationally weigh, for instance, claims of liberty against those of equality • Modern moral theories feature fragments and vestiges of classical morality that have lost their original context, and thereby lost their moral power • Modern moral philosophy does not engage in historical inquiry; thinkers are abstracted from their historical context • For instance, emotivism (the claim that all putative moral judgments are nothing more than the speaker’s subjective emotional preferences) must be understood within the historical context of early 20th century England o Emotivism arose as a result of frustration with defects in G. E. Moore’s intuitionism, another early 20th century moral theory o Emotivism is best understood as an empirical theory (a theory of how the language of morality was used in a particular time and place), rather than a moral theory AFTER VIRTUE 1 • All efforts at providing a rational basis for morality within the analytic philosophical tradition (e.g., John Rawls, Alan Gewirth, R. M. Hare) have failed CHAPTER 3 – EMOTIVISM: SOCIAL CONTENT AND SOCIAL CONTEXT • All theories of moral philosophy presuppose a theory of sociology, which modern moral philosophical theories wrongly ignore • The sociology of emotivism eliminates the distinction between manipulative and non-manipulative social relations • In contrast to emotivism, classical moralities feature a robust account of the self, one constituted by membership in a set of social groups (the self as father, grandson, villager) CHAPTER 4 – THE PREDECESSOR CULTURE AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT OF JUSTIFYING MORALITY • Northern Europeans led the Enlightenment (particularly Kant, Kierkegaard, and Hume), but their attempts to provide a rational basis for morality in the wake of the collapse of shared religious values have failed o Kantian and Kierkegaardian morality rest on defective arguments: Kant’s maxims fail to impart meaningful moral values, while Kierkegaard’s emphasis on radical choice conflicts with his conservative morality o Hume’s emphasis on the passions is similarly incoherent; he lacks a plausible account of how to choose among competing passions and fails to satisfactorily answer why one should not always act in self-interest CHAPTER 5 – WHY THE ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT OF JUSTIFYING MORALITY HAD TO FAIL • Aristotelian and religious ethical systems feature a telos (a goal) that can only be realized through the given ethical system o Within Aristotelian ethics, the telos is the good life o Within religious systems, the telos is heaven • In contrast, Enlightenment philosophers attempted to justify their moral beliefs by deriving, through rationality, moral rules from certain facts about human nature • Since Enlightenment philosophers rejected the notion of a telos, their attempts to justify morality were doomed to fail • Their failure is attributable to the fact that modern moral precepts cannot be deduced from human nature; a fact recognized by Hume in his distinction between facts and values • However, functional concepts allow for value statements to be derived from factual premises AFTER VIRTUE 2 o For instance, “He is a good farmer” can be derived from “This farmer gets the best crop yield,” and “This is a bad watch” can be derived from “This watch does not keep time accurately” o Because the Aristotelian moral tradition relies on the notion of man as having a central function, the fact-value distinction doesn’t apply in its case – moral judgments can derive from factual premises § Specifically, Aristotelian ethics understands and evaluates man as a function of his social roles – e.g., as father, citizen, or soldier CHAPTER 6 – SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE FAILURE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT • Bentham’s attempt to formulate a new telos of human happiness through utilitarianism failed o Mill recognized that happiness is not unitary and different pleasures cannot be rationally compared or chosen between o Sidgwick recognized that utilitarianism’s principle of maximizing the general happiness cannot be derived from the principle of pursuing one’s individual happiness • Analytic philosophy’s attempt to derive moral rules through rationality fails o For instance, Alan Gewirth attempts to conflate necessary goods with rights, but he does not recognize that the former are universal, while the latter are contingent and socially determined • Modern philosophers employ moral fictions (utility in utilitarianism; natural rights in certain analytic theories such as Gewirth’s) which claim to provide objective standards, but fail to do so; moreover, they are incommensurable with each other • The purported effectiveness of bureaucratic managers, which managers employ to justify their control over social systems, is another type of moral fiction CHAPTER 7 – “FACT,” EXPLANATION AND EXPERTISE • In disregarding Aristotelian functionalism, the Enlightenment era reduced the notion of fact to a sterile, value-free concept • Bureaucracy emerged in European societies according to the following general process: o Enlightenment thinkers inspired social reformers o Social reformers developed new management practices, which were then codified by sociologists o Contemporary technocrats adopted these management practices AFTER VIRTUE 3 CHAPTER 8 – THE CHARACTER OF GENERALIZATIONS IN SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THEIR LACK OF PREDICTIVE POWER • Bureaucratic and managerial expertise is a self-serving myth o Bureaucratic expertise relies on the purported existence of sociological laws with strong predictive power o However, sociological laws lack predictive power – for instance, any supposed sociological law features counterexamples that, in any other scientific discipline, would suffice to invalidate the law o Managers purport to employ sociological laws, but because of the systematic unpredictability of social life, such laws can never produce effective results CHAPTER 9 – NIETZSCHE OR ARISTOTLE? • Weber’s Nietzsche-influenced emotivist account of managerial bureaucracy accurately describes the contemporary social world • Because Nietzsche successfully discredited Enlightenment-era moral philosophy, one must choose between Nietzschean and Aristotelian morality – they are the only two options left • Liberalism lacks a central concept of the good, and prioritizes rules over virtues CHAPTER 10 – THE VIRTUES IN HEROIC SOCIETIES • The heroic societies (societies within the classical tradition) relied on storytelling as the means of moral education, such as the Homeric poems and the Northern European pagan sagas • Within heroic societies, individual roles were defined within a determinate social structure, and moral judgment was based on one’s actions (specifically, whether one’s actions fulfilled one’s role- determined set of duties) • In heroic societies, morality and social structure are one and the same o Virtues can only be understood within the context of their social structure, and vice versa o Moral questions can be answered by appeals to social fact (e.g., one’s moral obligations are determinable from one’s social position) o Classical morality resembles a game of chess – players agree on roles, rules, and ends, and one can thereby judge, as a factual matter, whether one is good or bad • Morality is always tied to a society’s local and particular aspects AFTER VIRTUE 4 o In contrast, modern morality strives for universality by seeking to detach actions and evaluations from social context, but such a universal project is doomed to fail CHAPTER 11 – THE VIRTUES AT ATHENS • Classical societies did not entirely agree on their conception of the virtues – even within classical Athens, for instance, the views of the Sophists, the Platonists, the Aristotelians, and the tragedians clashed o However, all shared an understanding of the virtues as inextricable from the social context of the city-state, and tied being a good man to being a good citizen • Philosophers approach the problem of conflicting virtues in different ways: o Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas understood the virtues as a unity – there can therefore be no conflict between the virtues o Sophocles (an Athenian tragedian) understood the virtues to potentially present incompatible conflicts – as a result, one is unable to always fulfill one’s moral obligations o Weber and Isaiah Berlin’s modern value pluralism understood the virtues as heterogenous
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