reading alasdair macintyre's after virtue

MacIntyre makes the case that, since the Enlightenment (and, before that, the Protestant Reformation), humanity abandoned divine law as the basis of morality, but tried to keep the basic Christian moral scheme intact (62). This fact, that we use the language of “rights” and “morality” when such language has been deprived of content, that we argue emotively using moral terms to express disapprobation and cajole conformity, he refers to as “moral incommensurability” (70). Why can’t we reach an agreement on what should be a relatively basic matter of ethics, namely the inclusion of a certain class of human persons within the bounds of the protected community? MacIntyre’s assessment is sweeping: “the language and the appearances of morality persist even though the integral substance of morality has to a large degree been fragmented and then in part destroyed” (5). He singles out abortion as an illustrative debate, one in which people can reason validly from conflicting premises without any way to judge the premises themselves (7).

“he most striking feature of the debates in which these disagreements are expressed is their interminable character…here seems to be no rational way of securing moral agreement in our culture” (6). MacIntyre begins his argument from a recognition of the difficulty, even the seeming futility, of modern political-moral debates. Moral Incommensurability: Are We Just Talking Past Each Other? I will instead restrain myself to those parts most relevant to dialogue. However, because After Virtue is so wide-ranging, covering large swaths of philosophical and literary history to sketch out the argument that a major break occurred at the point of the Enlightenment, I’m not going to review the entire book in depth. I think it should be obvious why we think it’s valuable to review this book, given that ERI’s whole point of existing is to dialogue about a contentious moral issue and train others to do the same. MacIntyre documents the history of modern (read here: Renaissance and later) philosophy as it relates to a pressing question: can we use dialogue to rationally convince others and reach moral agreement? For more information about this series, read our introductory article, “ Why Is ERI Doing Book Reviews ?” Estimated reading time: 9 minutesĪlasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue is one of the seminal books of 20th century philosophy. This book review of After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre is part of our series of reviews of books touching on the abortion debate.

Reading alasdair macintyre's after virtue