Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre

https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/remembering-alasdair-macintyre-1929-2025/

by danielam • 1 year ago

139 59 1 year ago

sisoes2• 1 year ago

I am not Roman Catholic anymore, but I read After Virtue shortly after I graduated from college and it fundamentally changed my moral worldview for the better. I owe him a great debt.

Requiescat in pace.

dharmatech2• 1 year ago

What would you consider yourself now, spiritually, if not Catholic?

radiorental• 1 year ago

To paraphrase Ricky Jervias (and probably Richard Dawkins before him)...

He just believes in one fewer gods now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SGOGH5-SCA

sisoes2• 1 year ago

Eastern Orthodox Christian. After Virtue is not a specifically Roman Catholic work, even though MacIntyre started slowly agree with its Aristotelian ethical system, and I still recommend the book to anyone willing to put in the work to understand it.

gundmc• 1 year ago

I read After Virtue while in college and suffering something of an existential crisis. That book really challenged me to shift my thinking on purpose and meaning. It holds great value to me on a personal level. Thank you, Professor MacIntyre.

gjm115• 1 year ago

Now I want to know whose work McIntyre described as "the philosophical equivalent of Vogue".

neel_k• 1 year ago

Richard Rorty, whose humanism and love of democracy MacIntyre despised.

Over the course of his career, MacIntyre went from an extreme left Marxist to an extreme right Thomist, and the only constant was his hatred of liberalism. He really couldn't stand the idea that people could believe in rationalism, feel the moral force of individual rights, or make purpose and meaning for themselves, all without appealing to an authoritarian source of control.

throw0101c• 1 year ago

[…] all without appealing to an authoritarian source of control.

Well that was partly what After Virtue was about: arguing it wasn't possible to have an objective moral system without the supernatural.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Virtue

And he's not the only one to hold this view (many atheists do as well):

* https://global.oup.com/academic/product/atheist-overreach-97...

You're left with either Nietzsche's arbitrary will, or virtues (à la Aristotle). For the latter, MacIntyre attempted to develop a system of morality (? ethics?) based on human biology:

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/655623.Dependent_Rationa...

Once can certainly tell oneself that there is a certain purpose or meaning to one's life, but if you're a materialist, then (the argument goes (AIUI)) it's not true.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is–ought_problem

The arrangement of atoms is arbitrary and without meaning, and to call some arrangement(s) "good" or "bad" or better / worse is a value judgement that is just as arbitrary and meaningless.

Veen• 1 year ago

Perhaps, but 20 years after Rorty's death, he's largely forgotten. I think it unlikely the same will be true of MacIntyre two-decades hence.

kendallgclark• 1 year ago

He didn’t write as if he hated liberalism. Maybe he did. But in his work you get deep, principled critique from the basis of epistemology and selfhood.

Lenin wrote like someone who hates liberalism. Stephen Miller gives that vibe from the right, though I doubt he can write anything coherent at all.

gjm115• 1 year ago

Excellent -- thanks! Do you know where/when he said it?

cess114• 1 year ago

I disagree with MacIntyre about a lot, both in theology and political philosophy, but I respect him for having tried to engage with both Nietzsche and the french philosophers heavily influenced by him as well as sticking by his egalitarian ethics even after the successful revolt of Reagan and the yuppies.

'When asked in 1996 what values he retained from his Marxist days, MacIntyre answered, “I would still like to see every rich person hanged from the nearest lamp post.”'

abcd_f2• 1 year ago

every rich person hanged from the nearest lamp post

As the joke from the 00s went - in other news, Cisco has become today the first company to close its doors because all its employees cashed out their stock options and quit.

That is, hanging rich persons from the lamp posts is probably not the maxim that would resonate well on the HN :)

cess114• 1 year ago

On average I think it has changed some in later years. I don't see as much eugenics and far-right apologia as I used to.

Boogie_Man• 1 year ago

I certainly see a through line between Chesterton and After Virtue. As a certified Heretics Enjoyer I'm sold.

toomuchtodo• 1 year ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alasdair_MacIntyre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Virtue

digiconfucius• 1 year ago

After Virtue was one of my favorite books, and it helped me get started learning about the history of ideas. I knew he was getting older, but I'm saddened to see him pass. In college, I had hoped that I could meet him one day. Rest in peace.

AquinasCoder2• 1 year ago

I recommend some of his other works: Whose Justice, Whose Rationality and Dependent Rational Animals.

It’s rewarding to seem him attempt a reconciliation between some modern epistemologies and Augustinian Thomism. I’m not sure he really pulls it off but his stature as a thinker in moral philosophy is undeniable.

coolKid721• 1 year ago

Also his very late work, ethics in the conflicts of modernity is often looked over for his older ones but is probably my favorite.

wyclif2• 1 year ago

After Virtue is his most important work, I think, but the above titles are the logical follow-ups to read next.

cm20123• 1 year ago

“After Virtue” annoys me because it basically argues that morality only makes sense within cultural traditions, as if we’re all just trapped in our local narratives with no access to universal truths. MacIntyre romanticizes ancient communities and traditions, but ignores the fact that plenty of those upheld horrifying practices—like slavery, misogyny, or human sacrifice—and calling those ‘virtuous’ just because they fit a narrative feels like moral relativism in disguise.

I get that modern ethics can feel fragmented, but the answer isn’t to retreat into tribalism or pretend reason can’t give us shared values across cultures.

Just because some people are bad at finding moral clarity doesn’t mean it’s impossible or meaningless.

varunneal• 1 year ago

How can reason give us shared values across cultures? Why do you suppose your moral clarity was generated from your brain and not your gut?

cm20123• 1 year ago

That's what the field of philosophy is about. I think, for instance, utilitarianism makes a lot more sense than "follow whatever your birth community historically does."

Isamu• 1 year ago

Often people are justifying moral systems that make sense overall but contain individual values that are grandfathered in, but maybe don’t make as much sense as the rest. There is a resistance to the kind of clarity that could force you to question some traditional values. Slavery is a good example to think about.

AquinasCoder2• 1 year ago

I think that's why I find his later works more compelling, particularly "Dependent Rational Animals," in which he grounds traditions in human telos. There are aims or goods which are common and transcend social constructs. After Virtue suffers from a great premise but doesn't quite stick the landing.

Aidevah• 1 year ago

Universalism: that is the intellectual realm abutting utopianism and ethnocentrism. "There are universal values, and they happen to be mine," was Stanley Hoffman’s delightful definition of the latter. Like utopianism and ethnocentrism, universalism normalizes, excludes, and shouts down. If “universal” does not mean universally accepted, then it means nothing. Those who do not accept must therefore at least be marginalized, and if possible stigmatized.

-- Richard Taruskin [1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/10/arts/the-new-seasonclassi...

cm20123• 1 year ago

Yes, for instance, I think its fine if people who support hurting other innocent people are marginalized.

bpshaver2• 1 year ago

MacIntyre romanticizes ancient communities and traditions, but ignores the fact that plenty of those upheld horrifying practices

What makes you think that? A huge part of After Virtue (basically the whole part, after the initial diagnosis of where we are now and how we got here) is about how to construct and understand communities that might provide a shared idea of human good without simply going back to an Athenian idea of what that looks like. In fact if I were to summarize the book in a nutshell I would argue its an attempt to rehabilitate Aristotelian ethics without simply accepting Aristotle's own moral percepts.

antithesizer2• 1 year ago

Different cultures have a lot in common and so do their morals. Culture is not arbitrary; it always has a grounding in universal human needs and features as well as somewhat variable factors such as environment.

zoogeny• 1 year ago

I think there is a difference between there being a universal moral Truth (ontological) vs. a particular individuals ability to know that universal (epistemological). The former doesn't necessarily imply the latter. Rejecting the latter (the ability to know) doesn't require rejecting the former (the universal).

If one considers that these two are decoupled, it poses a question: how could one live in alignment to a universal truth that one cannot know. It makes me wonder, can we find meaning without certainty.

Even in this age of the rejection of religious dogma, I tend to notice that people still want to cling to certainty. They are certain there is no morality (nihilism) or they are certain that morality can be found either in the study of nature (through empiricism) or reason (through rationalism).

I hardly ever see anyone suggest that they humbly do not know.

senderista• 1 year ago

Most people never introspect their own moral beliefs enough to even consider their validity.

lo_zamoyski• 1 year ago

I am very confused by these claims, because MacIntyre was exactly opposed to relativism, and emotivism, which he saw as characteristic of the hollow shell of modern morality [0]. He acknowledges Nietzsche's criticism of the farce of Enlightenment morals. He appealed to telos as the objective basis for ethics and morality and in that book advocated for return to Aristote.

Perhaps you misunderstand what culture is. It isn't some kind of fiction we lay on top of reality that gets in the way of reality. It is a shared language of a people about reality and one that is not static, but hopefully developing, but at the very least changing. Science is itself a part of culture. You are born into a culture, which can be anything form pretty good to downright lousy, and the "dialogue" of this culture of a people with reality, and other cultures, moves the development of this culture.

Think of all the things you have learned in the scope of science. That aggregate of learning is culture. The presuppositions that science rests on is culture. This doesn't contradict the possibility of knowing the universal. Rather, it is through the cultural that you come to know the universal and through which you are better prepared to know it. We benefit from thousands of years of cultural dialogue. We cannot attain a very high understanding of reality without immersing ourselves in this dialogue of cultures spanning human history.

(Incidentally, as MacIntyre was a Catholic convert, one thing the Catholic Church makes possible is the existence of both the particularity of ethnos and the universality of the Church; "catholic" means "universal". A multiplicity of cultures sharing in the universal, avoiding both cultural parochialism and an alienated cosmopolitanism.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Virtue

keybored4• 1 year ago

You’re talking about the past. What locales (I can’t say communities) right now do not practice or tolerate as a matter of course any horryfying practices?

qhiliq• 1 year ago

The MacIntyre piece I read first and got the most from is "Hegel on Faces and Skulls". It explains Hegel's critique of physiognomy and phrenology, which is about what we can and cannot learn about someone by looking at them. Said another way, the difference between expressions and physical traits. I think about it a lot whenever I see claims made about facial recognition systems, and in my day job working on motion capture.

lukeasrodgers• 1 year ago

Yes, this is still the most persuasive and concise argument I’ve encountered against a whole host of forms of biological reductionism, including those based on modern fmri techniques.

cafard2• 1 year ago

For the Chesterton buffs here, I will mention an essay of GKC's, which you can find at http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/alarms_and_discursions.html#.... It concludes

"I do not know whose heads are criminal, but I think I know whose are imbecile."

antithesizer2• 1 year ago

"Being asked to die for the nation state is like being asked to die for the telephone company."

-Alasdair MacIntyre

RIP

boxerab• 1 year ago

As an article in The Nation noted, ‘When asked in 1996 what values he retained from his Marxist days, MacIntyre answered, “I would still like to see every rich person hanged from the nearest lamp post.”’

cafard2• 1 year ago

Thanks to the poster: I remembered that a local bookstore might still have a copy of Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, and have ordered it.

Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre

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