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

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• 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

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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

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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

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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 and incommensurable – conflicts between virtues therefore do not admit of right or wrong answers

CHAPTER 12 – ARISTOTLE’S ACCOUNT OF THE VIRTUES • Aristotle’s theory of the virtues – specifically, the one found in the Nicomachean Ethics – stands as the definitive account of the classical moral tradition • Aristotle understands the virtues as a means to move toward the telos of eudaimonia (a well-lived life), but not merely as a means – exercising the virtues is a crucial part of eudaimonia itself • Unlike modern moral philosophy, Aristotle’s moral philosophy does not focus on rules • Because Aristotle has a holistic account of the virtues, he believes character virtues (such as courage) are inextricable from intellectual virtues (such as wisdom) o As a result, Aristotelian ethics precludes one from being both stupid and good (unlike Kantian ethics, in which one can be both) • In Aristotelian ethics, friendship (defined as shared recognition of the good) is an essential virtue in a society (unlike in the modern world, where friendship has been weakened and relegated to private life) • Aristotle’s moral philosophy was not perfect

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o Aristotle improperly believed non-Greeks to be incapable of forming political relationships; believed the lower classes to be incapable of key virtues; and lacked an adequate understanding of history o Other potential problems for Aristotelian ethics include his reliance on a now-discredited metaphysical biology; the fact that the context in which he wrote (classical Athens) is long gone; and his failure to adequately account for conflicting moral obligations

CHAPTER 13 – MEDIEVAL ASPECTS AND OCCASIONS • Medieval ethics were more heterogenous than commonly thought – at the time, Christian ethics coexisted with the vestiges of classical ethics o However, the two differed in their understanding of the virtues – for instance, classical ethics lacked an understanding of charity or patience as virtues • Judaic and Christian ethics, like Stoicism, emphasize moral law over virtue, and the universal over the particular • Every account of the virtues is linked to an account of the narrative structure of human life o For instance, the central medieval narrative structure was the quest, in which virtues enable one to overcome obstacles in order to reach a final, redemptive goal

CHAPTER 14 – THE NATURE OF THE VIRTUES • The wide variety in conceptions of the virtues challenges the notion that a single account of the virtues is possible o Homer conceived of the virtues as qualities that enable one to discharge one’s social role o Aristotle and Aquinas conceived of the virtues as qualities that enable one to move towards achieving a telos o Benjamin Franklin conceived of the virtues as means to maximize utility • A single account of the virtues is attainable by situating the virtues in terms of practices, narratives, and moral traditions, in which each account builds on its predecessor 1. Practice-oriented account of virtue o A practice (such as war in Homeric society, geometry in Aristotelian society, or painting in medieval society) provides the immediate context in which the virtues can be exhibited o A practice is “any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of

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excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended” o Internal goods are only coherent by reference to the practice (i.e., excelling in the practice itself), while external goods are contingently attached to the practice (e.g., money or fame) o A virtue is an acquired human quality which “tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices” § Example: the virtue of honesty is necessary to achieve excellence in a practice; to lack honesty (i.e., to cheat) would prevent one from achieving the practice’s internal goods (though one may still achieve external goods such as money or fame) o This account allows for differing conceptions of virtues between cultures, since cultures have different practices o This account is incompatible with utilitarianism (including Franklin’s utility-based account of the virtues), because utilitarianism does not distinguish between internal and external goods • The practice-oriented account of the virtues is not alone sufficient, and must be supplemented by an account of the virtues in terms of human narratives and moral traditions (see Chapter 15) o For instance, the practice-oriented account fails to adequately answer the problem of conflicting virtues, and also fails to account for certain virtues that can only be comprehended holistically (such as integrity, understood as singleness of purpose)

CHAPTER 15 – THE VIRTUES, THE UNITY OF A HUMAN LIFE AND THE CONCEPT OF A TRADITION • The modern world features an atomistic, fragmented conception of the self • In contrast, Aristotelian ethics understands the self as part of a unified narrative 2. Narrative-oriented account of virtue o Human actions are only intelligible as part of a narrative history o The virtues must be understood not only as means to achieve excellence in practices, but also to enable one to seek the good life as part of a narrative quest, including sustaining the necessary political communities for achieving the good life § The good life is a life spent seeking the good life § The specific conception of the good life differs between individuals and communities because one’s narrative is dependent on local particulars, such as one’s social role and obligations

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3. Tradition-oriented account of virtue o Because the good life is indissolubly local and particular, it is inextricably tied to tradition o The virtues must be understood not only as means to achieve excellence in practices and means to seek the good life, but also to sustain traditions that provide necessary historical context for such goals

CHAPTER 16 – FROM THE VIRTUES TO VIRTUE AND AFTER VIRTUE • Modern culture does not understand human life as a narrative unity • In modernity, practices have become marginalized, and external (as opposed to internal) goods now dominate • Because of these deviations from Aristotelian ethics, modern culture has a weaker conception of the virtues, focusing instead on moral rules o For instance, “honor,” “chastity” and “benevolence” have shifted in meaning, and once-rigorous terms (such as “duty” and “obligation”) have become muddled or treated as interchangeable • Jane Austen was, through her writings, the last great representative of Aristotelian ethics

CHAPTER 17 – JUSTICE AS A VIRTUE: CHANGING CONCEPTIONS • Rawls’ and Nozick’s incompatible accounts of justice each lack a concept of desert because both emphasize the individual over society, and the concept of desert only makes sense in the context of a community with a shared understanding of the good • Fragments and vestiges of classical morality survive in traditional communities, such as those of Orthodox Greeks and Jews, but these traditions are in danger of erosion • Because modern culture features incompatible conceptions of justice, reaching a moral consensus is futile o For instance, the Supreme Court’s role should be understood as making peace between incompatible conceptions of justice, rather than guided by shared moral principles (our society lacks any such shared principles)

CHAPTER 18 – AFTER VIRTUE: NIETZSCHE OR ARISTOTLE; TROTSKY AND ST. BENEDICT • Nietzsche’s polemic successfully discredits modern moral philosophy, but does not succeed in rebutting Aristotelian ethics o The good life can only be understood in the context of a community and Nietzsche’s “great man” morality plays into the very liberal individualism that Nietzsche so ably criticizes

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• Liberal individualism lacks a defensible moral theory, and towards the end of his life, Trotsky understood this also to be true of Marxism in practice • Like Benedictine communities during the fall of the Roman Empire, it is necessary that good people today create new forms of community to sustain moral life in the face of the impending moral dark ages

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The views and opinions expressed in the work featured above reflect those of the original author(s) alone.

The Philosogist (thephilosogist.com), 2020

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