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After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition, by Alasdair MacIntyre
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When After Virtue first appeared in 1981, it was recognized as a significant and potentially controversial critique of contemporary moral philosophy. Newsweek called it “a stunning new study of ethics by one of the foremost moral philosophers in the English-speaking world.” Since that time, the book has been translated into more than fifteen foreign languages and has sold over one hundred thousand copies. Now, twenty-five years later, the University of Notre Dame Press is pleased to release the third edition of After Virtue, which includes a new prologue “After Virtue after a Quarter of a Century.” In this classic work, Alasdair MacIntyre examines the historical and conceptual roots of the idea of virtue, diagnoses the reasons for its absence in personal and public life, and offers a tentative proposal for its recovery. While the individual chapters are wide-ranging, once pieced together they comprise a penetrating and focused argument about the price of modernity. In the Third Edition prologue, MacIntyre revisits the central theses of the book and concludes that although he has learned a great deal and has supplemented and refined his theses and arguments in other works, he has “as yet found no reason for abandoning the major contentions” of this book. While he recognizes that his conception of human beings as virtuous or vicious needed not only a metaphysical but also a biological grounding, ultimately he remains “committed to the thesis that it is only from the standpoint of a very different tradition, one whose beliefs and presuppositions were articulated in their classical form by Aristotle, that we can understand both the genesis and the predicament of moral modernity.”
- Sales Rank: #18211 in Books
- Published on: 2007-03-06
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .50" w x 6.00" l, .99 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 312 pages
Review
“After Virtue is a striking work. It is clearly written and readable. The nonprofessional will find MacIntyre perspicuous and lively. He stands within the best modern traditions of writing on such matters.” —New York Review of Books
“MacIntyre’s arguments deserve to be taken seriously by anybody who thinks that the mere acceptance of pluralism is not the same thing as democracy, who worries about politicians wishing to give opinions about everything under the sun, and who stops to think of how important Aristotelian ethics have been for centuries.” —The Economist
“After Virtue is a rigorous, ambitious, and original book. It is a reinterpretation of the entire history of Western moral philosophy, as decline, fall, and—possibly—rebirth.” —The Village Voice
About the Author
Alasdair MacIntyre is research professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of numerous books, including Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame Press, 1988) and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame Press, 1990).
Most helpful customer reviews
283 of 286 people found the following review helpful.
Nietzsche or Aristotle? the question is the same 20 years later.
By Peter R
I am rather flabbergasted that the only review on this page thus far is one comparing Alisdair MacIntyre to radical islamists. That is rather disconcerting as the author's roots, as others have already noted, come from the 1960-70's British Labour movement and from a very deep, very thought-out Marxism in the context Marxism demands to be judged on, namely, not only as a socio-economic theory, but as a robust and encompassing worldview. When MacIntyre finally decided to officially leave the Communist party, he noticed that his moral critique of Marxism seemed to lack any force, as the only two seemingly possible moral outlooks were that of a rather brass individualism ( an odd modern mixture of Kantian and Sartrean thought where each person chooses the moral law for himself ) and the tradition he was leaving, i.e. Marxism, which seemed incapable of serious self-critique. (SeeThe Macintyre Reader). The shrillness of his own protest sent him on a philosophical journey which he continues to go on to this day but we are lucky enough to have collection of his thoughts along the way. After Virtue was a tour de force when it hit the shelves roughly 20 years ago. It laid bare the utter incoherence of the use of moral language in societies of "advanced modernity", i.e., modern Europe, the former USSR, and the US. His critique of the various descendents of the Enlightenment, from utilitarians and Nietzscheans, blasted moral philosophy out of its slumber into a field that continues to grow to this day. Even today, most moral philosophers have spent most of their time attacking Macintyre's positive theses rather than critiquing his critique (a definite sign of the respect at his assessment of the use of modern moral language). To summarize it here would definitely deprive the would-be reader of the insightful journey that MacIntyre brings the reader on as he tries to look at the state of modern society. However, I will summarize the major motivations on why this book was written and why someone would read it:
1) Why are there so many types of moral disagreements in modern societies?
2) Why do these disagreements never seem to end but go on indefinitely?
3) Can any moral theory be related to actual facts or is all moral language sui generis?
Not surprisingly, MacIntyre traces most of these problems to those thinkers of the Enlightenment yet it would be a MISTAKE (as the first reviewer makes) in thinking that MacIntyre is somehow laying the blame solely on the Enlightenment for the current situation. Rather, his whole thesis is that they did the best they could in defending in what they thought was the CONTENT of morality (the culture of post-Enlightenment Europe being as it were a mix of
Christian values with an intense admiration of newly re-discovered Greco-Roman pagan texts on a range of subjects) with their own philosophical methods (See Hume's reasoning on why women should remain chaste until marriage). MacIntyre's insight is that they HAD to fail. No philosophical brilliance they could muster could save the CONTENT they wished to save (for example,"always tell your mother the truth") with their prescribed METHODS of doing philosophy (for example a la Kant, "all moral laws have the character of being assented to by all rational persons at all times in all cultures"). The Enlightenment thinkers chose an impossible task and thus failed (and moreover had to fail in such a way that their failure was relatively hidden from the thinkers themselves and their respective cultures at large). It is only with Nietzche do we have a thinker brave enough to raze the CONTENT they wished to save with the METHODS and start totally anew.
Thus, half-way through the book, MacIntyre offers the reader a stark choice: either we must choose that all moral talk (talk of right & wrong) is really an attempt to impose one's will on another person a la Nietzsche or that there is form of moral language that is not undercut by Nietzsche's own rather devastating attack on (post-)Enlightenment moral theories.
Hence begins MacIntyre's foray from critique to laying out a positive philosophical programme that leads to several books (See Whose Justice? Which Rationality? & Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Paul Carus Lectures) especially) and a refining of his ideas.
Does Nietzsche win?
That is for the reader to decide. MacIntyre has been steadily producing a body of work that tries to show that Nietzsche does not win (it starts as a whisper in this book and finally gets turned into a shout in later works). However, like all philosophy, his attempt is an argument, and it is up to the reader to decide if it is a good one.
5 stars, hands down. I really hope you decide to buy(or check-out) this important work which deserves to taken seriously for years to come. ( 20 and counting!)
67 of 68 people found the following review helpful.
Aristotle de- and re-constructed
By Jacob
MacIntyre's book is a sustained critique of "the modern project." The modern project came about in the 17th and 18th centuries. Thinkers tried to rework ethics and philosophy but in a new way: abandoning the Aristotelian and judeo-Christian ethic, they ended with a schizophrenic autonomy. Man is now seen as an autonomous agent who should further his autonomy but must live in the contradiction with other autonomous agents who also want to protect their autonomy. The modern project is a violent one at its core.
The strength of MacIntyre's work is his sustained critique of modernity and the "natural rights" tradition. He reintroduces the concept of "narrative" as an ethical tool. I will highlight the main ideas:
The Ghost of "Human Rights"
Rights have a highly specific character and are resistant to the idea of universality. The language of rights talk differs from century to century and place to place, at each moment reflecting more the demands of th community rather than the story of humanity. And when rights are attempted to be universal in scope, they reflect, not the needs of humanity, but the agenda of the powered elite. Rights talk can be rehabilitated, but only in terms of local community's narrative.
Deconstructing Aristotle
Contrary to his critics, MacIntyre is not arguing for a naive return to Aristotle. Rather, he points out the resilience of the Aristotelian tradition and then critiques its shortcomings. He uses Aristotle as a foil against Nietzsche. The importance of virtue at this point is not simply to demonstrate that Aristotle is the last word in ethics, but to show that it is impossible for consistent moderns to be virtuous. A virtue can only be understood in light of its telos (184). "The" good orders "our" goods. Modernity, accordingly, lacks such a telos--or rather has competing teloi.
Narratival Ethics
Man is a story-telling animal. We enter life with other characters and we have to learn what they are in order to understand how others respond to us (216). In ethics we learn the role we are to play. My narrative is inter-locking with the narratives of other members of the community. The telos, then, gives unity to this diversity of narratives. The telos allows me to see the whole of the narrative and the narrative gives clarity to the attempted moral vision (219).
MacIntyre's Answer
What is the good life? The good life is one spent seeking for the good life. The virtues necessary for the good life enables me to understand what the good life is (219). Life is a journey and virtue is the map.
Conclusion
MacIntyre's work is dense and often hard to read. Most of the discussions of analytic philosophy were lost on me. While I thoroughly enjoyed his critique of natural rights, I think he spent too much time on it and then conclusion could have been clearer. The section on narratival ethics was outstanding. Contrary to the blurb on the back, his afterword really doesn't deal with the integration of Aristotle and biblical theology.
This work deserves its pride of place as one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century.
45 of 47 people found the following review helpful.
Not easy but rewarding
By Ovidius
After Virtue is a landmark. Although some parts can be rather dry, MacIntyre is always carefully building towards his persuasive and often devastating conclusions (for example, that belief in human rights "is one with belief in witches and in unicorns" (69)). Although by no means an easy read, he writes in a personable, sometimes even conversational, way. He also often has a funny grumpy-old-man tone, grumpy about social scientists, managers, therapists and liberals.
He writes with seeming mastery of the western tradition. However, he rarely makes citations. For example, in his discussions of Kant he usually does not even mention a text by name, let alone provide citations. When discussing other writers he will sometimes mention a particular book but then supply no or very few citations. Rather, he tends to discuss thinkers in general: the problems they were trying to address, how they failed and how they are historically situated.
In outline, his argument is that in the period between 1630 and 1850, morality came to signify a distinct cultural space of rules of conduct which are neither theological nor legal nor aesthetic. Once that understanding of morality became a received doctrine, Northern European Enlightenment thinkers attempted to provide a rational justification for morality (39). However, by freeing morality from teleology (whether Aristotelian or Christian), theism and hierarchy, they in effect undermined any rational foundation or criterion for morality. Once thinkers such as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche showed that Enlightenment thinkers had themselves failed to provide a rational justification for morality, the result was our modern world of existentialism, emotivism (or moral relativism), unmoored moral fragments and competing moral islands with incommensurable criteria. MacIntyre argues, however, that morality does have a rational ground when it is based on teleology because one can then rationally say whether or not something is good or bad in relation to achieving that shared good. Thus, Nietzsche's critique of Enlightenment rationality does not extend to the Aristotelian tradition since the Enlightenment had freed itself of Aristotelianism (and for MacIntyre the Enlightenment was therefore "a peculiar kind of darkness" in which we still live (92)).
Roughly speaking, the book has three major parts: the first lays out the problem; the second--which for me is the most rich--lays out a history of ideas of virtue; the third develops MacIntyre's restatement of the virtue ethics stemming from Aristotle.
He speaks with an authoritative and persuasive voice, so the reader must supply his or her own sense of caution (though MacIntyre does often use the expression "if my argument is correct"). Sometimes he doesn't supply much argumentation, just what he sees to be most decisive; other times he takes pages to lay out an argument without it being too clear where he is going until he gets there.
When someone puts this much thought into an issue of this magnitude, it is worth more than its weight in gold. More than a commentary, it is an original work of philosophy both in terms of moral philosophy and the history of ideas.
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