MacIntyre Against Morality

Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity:An Essay on Desire, Practical Reasoning, and Narrativeby alasdair macintyrecambridge, 332 pages, $49.99 I The dialogues of Plato provide the first sustained demonstration both of the depth and difficulty of philosophy, and of the fact that the beginnings of the . . . . Continue Reading »

Waiting for St. Vladimir

Alasdair MacIntyre, who is probably the greatest living philosopher, concludes his 1981 masterwork After Virtue by saying, “We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict.” In that book MacIntyre argues that a correct understanding of morality is based . . . . Continue Reading »

Politics without Politics

I was very privileged to be able to attend a lecture by Alasdair MacIntyre at Catholic University here in DC over the weekend. The topic was “Ends and Endings”, and the speech was a delightfully rambling overview of the connections between teleology and literature, ethics and . . . . Continue Reading »

The Achievement of Alasdair MacIntyre

Moral philosophers are caught in a peculiar paradox these days. On the one hand, their field is flourishing: No longer intimidated by the logical positivists (who denied truth to moral assertions except as expressions of likes and dislikes), thinkers as diverse as Iris Murdoch, Martha Nussbaum, and . . . . Continue Reading »

The Hipster and the Organization Man

From all appearances, it is now back in style to be critical of American individualism. Indeed, that critique has never gone entirely out of style, and for very good reasons. But views on these matters also seem to follow cycles which, if not of Schlesingerian predictability, are nevertheless . . . . Continue Reading »