Macintyre’s After Virtue
and the Disagreement about Disagreement
Germán Meléndez*
Abstract: It is the purpose of this paper both to define the problem which MacIntyre is aimed
at solving in After Virtue and to locate the basic assumptions and contentions on which the argument for his main proposal, i.e. a revival of Aristotelianism, ultimately rely. This task seems rather
unproblematic itself and simply accessible to an attentive reading of the text. However, as I hope
to show, a precise characterization of the problem, of the argument and, even, of the main thesis
of After Virtue happens to be, at a closer look, evasive (to say the least), given the intricate way in
which MacIntyre presents his ideas. The present paper is, in the main, a successive reformulation of
each of the aforementioned issues. What initially gives itself as the problem to be solved and what,
at first instance, the argument appears to be pointing to, requires in each case substantial qualification as soon as one tries to make out of the text a unified and self-contained whole. The remarkable
fact that our sight begins to blur in the same measure as the demand for focus and contour is applied to the text might have been the price to pay for the impressive way in which the author tries to
keep track of such comprehensive and multifarious strands of thought as his ambitious task seems
intrinsically to require.
Keywords: MacIntyre, virtue, disagreement, Aristotle
Tras la Virtud de MacIntyre
y el desacuerdo sobre el desacuerdo
Resumen: El propósito de este trabajo es no solo definir el problema que MacIntyre pretende
resolver en “Tras la virtud” sino también localizar las suposiciones básicas y controversias en
las que el argumento de su propuesta principal, es decir, el renacimiento del aristotelismo, en últimas, depende. En sí misma parece una tarea sin problemas y simplemente abordable mediante
una lectura atenta del texto. Sin embargo, como espero demostrar, una precisa caracterización del
problema, el argumento, e incluso la tesis principal de “Tras la virtud”, al mirarlos de cerca son
*
Recibido: 2012-09-04
Aprobado: 2012-11-04
Universidad Nacional de Colombia. gamelendeza@unal.edu.co
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evasivos (por decir lo menos), dada la forma intrincada en que MacIntyre presenta sus ideas. Este
trabajo es, en general, una reformulación sucesiva de cada uno de los problemas mencionados. Lo
que inicialmente emerge como el problema a resolver y lo que, en primera instancia, el argumento
parece estar indicando, requiere en cada caso una calificación sustancial cuando uno trata de recoger del texto un todo unificado y autónomo. El hecho notable de que nuestra visión comience
a difuminarse en la misma medida en que la demanda de atención y el contorno se aplica al texto
podría haber sido el precio a pagar por la forma impresionante en el que el autor trata de hacer un
seguimiento de estas líneas generales y múltiples del pensamiento según su ambiciosa tarea parece
intrínsecamente requerir.
Palabras clave: MacIntyre, la virtud, el desacuerdo, Aristóteles.
Après la Vertu de MacIntyre
et le désaccord sur le désaccord
Résumé: Le but de ce travail n’est pas uniquement de définir le problème que MacIntyre prétend résoudre dans « Après la vertu », mais il s’agit également de localiser les suppositions basiques
et les controverses dans lesquelles l’argument de sa proposition initiale, c’est-à-dire, la renaissance
de l’aristotélisme, dépend finalement. En soi, cela semblerait un travail simple et abordable à travers
une lecture attentive du texte. Cependant, tel que je pense le montrer, une caractérisation précise du
problème, l’argument, et même la thèse principale de « Après la vertu », en les regardant de près,
sont évasifs (pour dire le moins), vue la manière confuse avec laquelle MacIntyre présente ses idées.
Ce travail est, de manière générale, une reformulation successive de chacun des problèmes mentionnés. Ce qui au début apparait comme un problème à résoudre et ce que, en première instance,
l’argument semble indiqué, demande pour chaque cas une qualification substantielle lorsque l’on
essaie de prendre du texte un tout unifié et autonome. Le fait notable que notre vision commence
à s’estomper alors que la demande de concentration et le contour s’applique au texte pourrait avoir
été le prix à payer du fait de la manière impressionnante avec laquelle l’auteur essaie de réaliser un
suivi de ces lignes générales et multiples de la pensée selon son ambitieux et exigeant travail.
Mots-clés: McIntyre, la vertu, le désaccord, Aristote.
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Introduction
It is the purpose of this paper both to define the problem which MacIntyre is aimed at
solving in After Virtue and to locate the basic
assumptions and contentions on which the argument for his main proposal, i.e. a revival of
Aristotelianism, ultimately rely. This task seems
rather unproblematic itself and simply accessible to an attentive reading of the text. However,
as I hope to show, a precise characterization of
the problem, of the argument and, even, of the
main thesis of After Virtue happens to be, at a
closer look, evasive (to say the least), given the
intricate way in which MacIntyre presents his
ideas. The present paper is, in the main, a successive reformulation of each of the aforementioned issues. What initially gives itself as the
problem to be solved and what, at first instance,
the argument appears to be pointing to, requires
in each case substantial qualification as soon as
one tries to make out of the text a unified and
self-contained whole. The remarkable fact that
our sight begins to blur in the same measure
as the demand for focus and contour is applied
to the text might have been the price to pay for
the impressive way in which the author tries to
keep track of such comprehensive and multifarious strands of thought as his ambitious task
seems intrinsically to require.
The first section gives an initial synoptic
presentation of what MacIntyre takes to be the
epicenter of contemporary moral crisis and of
the causes which MacIntyre suggests as indicative of a virtual solution to such crisis. It subsequently proceeds to show how MacIntyre’s task
requires of a two-leveled argumentation which
has to appeal on the first level to a normatively
informed historical narrative and on the second
level to a partly systematical but also partly historical justification of precisely that historical
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(or narrative) type of rationality deployed on
the first level. This first section focuses on the
second-order argumentation and drives to the
conclusion that MacIntyre’s own strictures concerning the structure of a rational argument in
favor of a revival of the Aristotelian tradition
of moral thought requires an important qualification of the initial too drastic picture of the
origin of modern philosophy as the aftermath
of a catastrophe. On the other hand, the more
basic task of a justification of such strictures
turns out to be, as shown in the second section, just a desideratum the fulfillment of which
MacIntyre postpones to his later Whose Justice?
Which Rationality? What systematically constitutes a preliminary step has been chronologically deferred.
The third section is concerned with what
I have referred to as first level of MacIntyre’s
argument. It tries to show the way in which
MacIntyre’s critique of modern morality is articulated. This critique has both a normative
and a descriptive component. What the former
is concerned, MacIntyre expects the reader to
agree without further argument about the existence of contemporary moral disagreement
and suggests a connection of this phenomenon
with other recognizable features of our present.
What the latter is concerned, he expects that
the reader agrees in the negative and critical
character of radical moral disagreement and
those other related features of our contemporary world. Taken that much for granted, MacIntyre argues, again on the descriptive level
and as part of his causal analysis for an intrinsic
connection between such outstanding negative symptoms of the present crisis and what
can be taken as the central invention of modern
moral philosophy: the autonomous self. It follows from this connection that MacIntyre gives
an inverted valuation of the modern ascent of
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Macintyre’s After Virtue and the disagreement about disagreement
the autonomous self when compared with the
current (viz. liberal) assessment of this process
as acknowledgedly definitory for the Enlightenment. The crucial step in After Virtue is the explanation of the correlated emergence of both
the insoluble moral disagreement and the modern self as the result of a lack: the lack of a teleological framework as the necessary condition
for a rational discourse on the virtues. On a conceptual level this lack deprives the key concepts
operating in the premises of moral discourse of
their functional character and on the sociological level deprives the individual of any social
identity. Autonomy actually amount to anomie.
In the final section, it is suggested, that a
comparison between MacIntyre’s characterization of the fifth and fourth century B.C. Athenian crisis and of our contemporary crisis leads
again to an important qualification of what
initially seems to be the point of the argument
in After Virtue. For, it turns out that the phenomenon of radical moral disagreement is not
exclusive of the modern world and that, obviously enough, the causes of such disagreement
cannot be found neither in the anachronism of
a modern autonomous ego nor in the disruption
of a not yet existent Aristotelian tradition. It has
then to be called to attention that MacIntyre’s
objection against the modern world is not actually the existence of moral disagreement but,
more precisely, the existence of insoluble moral
disagreement. MacIntyre underlines the fact
that Greek ethical thought, even amidst severe
disagreement on the nature of virtue in general
and of singular virtues in particular, continued
to define them within the teleological context
provided by the polis and the agon. This teleological framework of the virtues, theoretically
grasped by Aristotle in his ethical theory, preserved, so it seems (on this point is MacIntyre’s
account far from clear), the possibility of restoring some agreement on a new level. However,
these two teleological reference points were
themselves, in their disparity, the responsible
source for the Athenian fifth century radical
moral disagreement.(On this point, After Virtue
casts a shadow which only later Whose Justice,
Which Rationality will dissipate). This calls for
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a further qualification of MacIntyre’s contention in After Virtue. The presence (or in our case:
the restoration) of a teleological framework,
even through a reformulation of the driving
ends and goods, does not exclude the unavoidable possibility of radical moral disagreement.
It does allow however, at the same time, for
the restoration and temporal consolidation of
agreement without which no productive redefinition of the ends on which every healthy,
i.e. evolving, tradition is ultimately dependent,
would be possible. Paradoxically, MacIntyre
turns out to be an apologist of ‘real’ progress in
the sense of progress within traditions productively renewed by conflict. If this is an adequate
interpretation, MacIntyre’s critique of the Enlightenment could be rephrased as a critique
of the Enlightenment’s moral disagreement as
sign of stagnation and dispersion. The Enlightenment would be just the frenetic illusion of
constant progress. Or, if one may allow liberalism raise here at least and at last a question, can
real progress take place despite, or precisely
because, of this lack of agreement on goods and
ends? Disagreement on the meaning of ‘progress’ has been since ever the constant disagreement since modernity gave birth to its critics.
In this respect, in fact, nothing has changed.
At least in this respect, one would have to give
MacIntyre some reason.
1. Rational Justification
and the Justification
of Rationality
MacIntyre belongs to a tradition of thinkers who claim that our contemporary world
faces a deep crisis and, more particularly, he
belongs to those who are concerned in showing that this crisis is mainly a moral crisis. MacIntyre locates the main feature of this crisis
in the fact that “there seems to be no rational
way of securing moral agreement in our culture (MacIntyre 1984: 6).” This structural incapability of modern moral discourse to settle
interminable moral disagreement is directly
linked with the fact that the ultimate premises
on which the conflicting moral arguments are
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based are incommensurable, i.e. irreconcilable.
They involve, according to MacIntyre, concepts
of the most heterogeneous historical origins
which have survived the disruption of the original contexts in which they were imbedded and
from which they originally acquired their argumentative function and the possibility of their
rational justification. Once these concepts have
become isolated fragments after the dissolution
of the conceptual scheme to which they organically belonged they might well carry an afterlife
but, so to say, no longer a rational one. They are
no longer capable to give account of themselves,
viz. of the ultimate grounds of their normative
value. Following one of the most powerful illustrations of this thesis on modern moral disagreement, MacIntyre compares the irrational
afterlife of our basic moral concepts to that of
the concept ‘taboo’ in Polynesian culture.
Deprive the taboo rules of their original context and they at once are apt to appear as a set
of arbitrary prohibitions, as indeed they characteristically do appear when the initial context is lost, when those background beliefs in
the light of which the taboo rules had originally been understood have not only been abandoned but forgotten.
In such a situation the rules have been deprived of any status that can secure their authority and, if they do not acquire some new status
quickly, both their interpretation and their justification become debatable. (Ibidem: 112).
The key concepts of modern moral thought
faced a similar fate. MacIntyre traces the catastrophic disruption of their original context back
to the origin and the foundations of the modern world, viz. the Enlightenment. MacIntyre’s
assessment of this crucial historical moment
couldn’t be more clear and emphatic: “one
must hold that the Enlightenment project was
not only mistaken, but should never have been
commenced in the first place (ibidem: 118).” The
history of the Enlightenment is the history of a
mistake and its catastrophic consequences and
the sources of this terrible mistake, despite its
undeniable sociological connotations, are to be
found first of all, according to MacIntyre, in the
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realm of moral philosophy1, more particularly,
within the ethical principles of modern liberal
individualism (cf. ibidem: 2).
Now, the question of whether our culture stands in a deep crisis or not, the question
whether, if it does, its nature necessarily has
to be described in terms of interminable moral disagreement, and the question whether, if
this is the case, its causes are to be found in the
heritage of the Enlightenment, are all certainly
themselves a matter of deep disagreement. One
does not need to go too far to find evidence for
this fact. It is the rule in the ongoing discussion
about the so-called postmodernity, or, in other
words, in the debate concerning the alleged obsolescence or the alleged persisting historical relevance of the foundations of the Enlightenment
project. Despite all its lack of a precise contour
(due, at least partially, to the comprehensive
character of the issues involved) and despite all
its lack of conclusive power (which MacIntyre
could surely interpret as highly symptomatic of
the crisis itself) this discussion is undoubtedly
an important part not only of contemporary
philosophical debate but, insofar as it pertains
the stance of our culture in general, is also part
of the present discussion in the apparently so
heterogeneous realms of art, sociology, politics,
natural science. Now, with such a ‘disquieting
suggestion’ as we have just taken over from the
introductory chapter of his book, MacIntyre has
just taken sides in this interminable controversy
which has so far shown to be also resistant to
any kind of substantial agreement.
As a matter of fact, MacIntyre is willing
to take the disagreement about the existence
or the character of the crisis into account as an
important part of what the thesis proposed by
him in After Virtue has to explain (cf. ibidem: 4),
namely, ‘interminable’ moral disagreement in
general. For, according to MacIntyre, our divergent perception, viz. evaluation of the present condition of ‘our culture’ is itself rooted in,
1
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“What I am going to suggest is that the key episodes in the social
history which transformed, fragmented, and, if my extreme view is
correct, largely displaced morality [...] were episodes in the history
of philosophy, that it is only in the light of that history that we can
understand how the idiosyncrasies of everyday contemporary moral
discourse came about [...].” (Ibidem: 36).
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Macintyre’s After Virtue and the disagreement about disagreement
and is an expression of, the moral disagreement
which constitutes the main symptom of the actual crisis. MacIntyre is here raising, on the one
hand, the uncontroversial and trivial claim that
the perception of a certain situation or development in terms of crisis, failure, disorder, necessarily involves certain evaluative standards (cf.
ibidem: 3) and that these standards are themselves ultimately moral ones. But MacIntyre
is not just pointing to the mere existence of a
certain dysfunction nor is he just stressing the
need for an etiological definition of the crisis.
He is making the claim that such an etiology
must necessarily be a historical one. He is making the controversial claim that a purely analytical approach to the critical phenomenon (i.e.
moral disagreement) under investigation must
necessarily fail “to reveal the fact of this disorder” (ibidem: 2, cf. ibidem: 112s.) and so would
also fail a value-neutral historical approach (cf.
ibidem: 4). Now, according to MacIntyre, both
the unhistorical analytical and the historical but
value-neutral approach to ethics are to be conceived as representative of a certain position only
intelligible as part of the history of modern moral
philosophy, more particularly, as part of the tradition of liberal individualism. MacIntyre undertakes the task of explaining on the basis of a
normative historical account, the origin of both
the ahistorical approach to ethics (which mistakenly assumes an opposition between reason
and historicity, e.g. tradition, (cf. ibidem 222) and
the fact-value (is-ought) distinction (cf. ibidem:
56ss.) as a particular extension of the all-pervasive moral disagreement.
As it stands, MacIntyre is thus compelled
by the nature of his own historical approach to
ethics to present the opposing philosophical
views as an essential part of the explananda of
his theory2. Since one of the essential features
of MacIntyre’s ethical theory lies ostensibly in
his attempt to take his standpoint within con2
temporary ethical debate by way of a thorough
reflection on the origin of disagreement itself, it
is no surprise that he readily takes the theoretical burden of explaining why his opponents in
this debate are liable to disagree with him on
this issue3.
But, naturally enough, given the overall
purpose of his work, MacIntyre expects not just
to afford an explanation of why a whole array
of philosophically significant positions4 have
appeared on the stage of the modern moral
debate but, at the same time, to develop an argument against them. This argument must be
necessarily a rational argument at least if we are
to believe, that his argumentative praxis in After
Virtue already exemplary enacts in some way the
solution to the contemporary crisis, namely
the capability for a rational settlement of moral
disagreement on this decisive meta-level5.
3
4
5
“It may seem to many readers that as I have elaborated my initial hypothesis I have step by step deprived myself of very nearly all possible
argumentative allies. But is not just this required by the hypothesis
itself? For if the hypothesis is true, it will necessarily appear implausible, since one way of stating part of the hypothesis is precisely to
assert that we are in a condition which almost nobody recognizes and
which perhaps nobody at all can fully recognize. If my hypothesis appeared initially plausible, it would certainly be false.” (Ibidem: 4).
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MacIntyre’s argumentative proceedure in After Virtue rests thus in a
kind of psychoanalytical faith on the possibility of achieving a theurapeuticeffect on our present by way of waking it to a certain awareness of its moral history, though while recognising that there is an imbedded resistance against perceiving the essential facts of such history
as reconstructed by the analyst, viz. the historian of philosophy. (This
gives a crucial difference to analytical therapeutics in that in this case
the ‘patient’ may not even be aware that he is ill at all). Recognising
this history as one’s own, and more important, recognising the evaluative accent that the analyst gives to it in terms of order and disorder, achievement and failure, seems already to presuppose a substantial change in the way in which one defines one’s (ethical) identity at
least to the extent in which this identity is reflected in the resistance
to accept those standards by which such history is informed. If there were no such resistance there would be at least such basic shared
moral standards as to finally guarantee agreement on the existence
and the genetically accountable nature of contemporary crisis. These
standards, being themselves moral, could be interpreted precisely as
being the ones capable of securing moral agreement in the present
circumstances. And MacIntyre assumes this to be so for he is aware
of the fact that the absence of resistance to his appreciation of modern
culture would have invalidated his thesis in its very inception.
Curiously enough Macintyre does not include the tradition of thought
to which he himself might belong as part of the history of modern ethical thought which he writes in After Virtue. He does indeed establish a
connection between his philosophy and Aristotle’s, but he does not refer to any modern tradition that, like he himself, recurres to a certain,
however qualified, revival of pre-modern thought. Does MacIntyre
believe that he as a thinker does not belong to any modern tradition
(e.g. neo-Aristotelism)? Is he as a modern thinker in a condition similar to the one he depicts as belonging to the modern self?
According to MacIntyre disagreement on the level of conflicting philosophical approaches to morality can be itself viewed as a particular extension of universal moral disagreement. This anticipates an objection,
which could be prompted at this place, that I am confusing in the name
of MacIntyre two different levels of disagreement: disagreement concerning moral issues and disagreement between philosophical theories
of moral. For MacIntyre there is no place for such sharp distinction.
“Moral philosophies are, before they are anything else, the explicit articulations of the claims of particular moralities to rational allegiance.
And this is why the history of morality and the history of moral philosophy are a single history. It follows than that when rival moralities
make competing and incompatible claims, there is always an issue at
the level of moral philosophy concerning the ability of either to make
good a claim to rational superiority over the other (ibidem: 268).”
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The question that naturally arises at this
point is whether MacIntyre is reducing his intended criticism of the different currents of
modern moral philosophy which he addresses
in After Virtue (e.g. emotivism, intuitionism, utilitarianism, analytical philosophy etc.) to a matter of the adequate way of tracing its history, i.e.
genealogy. If he knowingly happens to sustain,
as he does, that this is in the main the character
of his critique, and if he therefore rejects the validity of the objection that he would be thereby
incurring in the naturalistic fallacy of pretending to derive values from (historical) facts, he
would be unmistakably appealing to standards
of rationality radically different from the ones
which he thinks to be representative of the liberal standpoint. This is in fact, as we will see
immediately, what MacIntyre’s own assertions
lead us to conclude. Hence, MacIntyre has still
to report a further basic disagreement, this time
on the issue of the nature of what is to count
rational argumentation. If his arguments are to
convince his opponents, mustn’t he first move
them to recognize his standards of rationality?
If the parallelism which MacIntyre sees
between morality and moral philosophy can
be said to hold also between practical thinking
and the theory of practical thinking, or in other
words, if this philosophical disagreement on the
nature of rationality represents not a purely
descriptive failure in the attempt to capture one
single given reality but it happens to reflect the
actual existence of a multiplicity of standards of
rationality on the level of contemporary moral
discourse, and if philosophers themselves accordingly make use of different models of rationality, then the problem of moral disagreement
digs much deeper than one might initially have
believed. The irreconcilability of conflicting
moral positions would not simply emerge from
the fact that we operate with incommensurable
ultimate premises involving concepts of divergent historical origins (cf. ibidem: 10), but also
from the fact that we put into action in our arguments different concepts of rationality.
crisis. Firstly, he has to criticize those theories
of morality which, in his view, just express and
reinforce radical moral disagreement and impede a restoration of our moral language. This
critique contains a positive and constructive aspect. MacIntyre has to show how our moral language can be integrated or reinterpreted into an
organic whole and for this purpose he will have
to argue for the superiority of an Aristotelian
type of moral system as the restoring power.
However, and this is his other task, in order to
show the superiority of this type of theory by
means of an historical account he must argue
for a certain concept of rationality which can
legitimate his way of appealing to history as a
rational argument.
MacIntyre does include in his book some
basic material for a definition of practical rationality as essentially linked to historical explanation and accountability6 and he conveys that it
is precisely this type of rationality which must
be put also into practice on the level of his philosophical argumentation. MacIntyre claims that
an action cannot be rendered intelligible nor can
it be accountable if it is not integrated in some
kind of historical narrative (cf. ibidem: 209). This
essential principle of MacIntyre’s theory of action applies also to speech acts in general (and
one may conclude that it is also true of philosophical utterances) whose most familiar type
of narrative structure is that of the conversation
(cf. ibidem: 210)7. Now, so as a particular action
can only be rendered intelligible and can only
be fully accounted for within a narrative context, so human life as a whole can only acquire
meaning and be justified (in first place for the
subject itself) if it can be rendered in the form of
an intelligible story. Without going into further
details, we may here just summarily recall MacIntyre’s central thesis on this issue, according
to which “man is in his actions and practice, as
6
7
MacIntyre must solve a two-fold task in order to pave the way out of contemporary moral
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On this particular, MacIntyre’s position resembles Hampshire’s claim
that justification on the level of morality is indissolubly linked to historical explanation (Hampshire, p.6s.). Accordingly MacIntyre, as also
Hampshire, are compelled to put the distinction between facts and
values into question.
The conversation, which seems to be just a particular of the kind of
narrative context which MacIntyre is ascribing to human action in general, can be taken in such a way as paradigmatic as to illuminate the
whole realm of action: “For conversation, understood widely enough,
is the form of human transactions in general. Conversational behavior
is not a special sort or aspect of human behavior [...] (ibidem: 211).”
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Macintyre’s After Virtue and the disagreement about disagreement
well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling
animal(ibidem: 216)8.” This I take to be the ultimate support given by MacIntyre in After Virtue
for his conception of rationality. This thesis, it
may be remarked, is itself not a historical but
a systematic one if any, this is the ground on
which MacIntyre invites to a strictly philosophical confrontation. Only if agreement is reached
in this particular could he expect any receptivity for his conception of rationality from the side
of his opponents.
However, MacIntyre has not explicitly
used in these considerations the concept of rationality (he just talks in terms of intelligibility,
meaningfulness and accountability). MacIntyre
is more explicit in this respect when he proceeds to include the life of the individual and
its respective narrative within the life and history of institutions and, more broadly, within
the course of a tradition (cf. ibidem: 221ss.). In
a short passage, MacIntyre reacts against the
usually alleged opposition between reason and
tradition9 and states:
For all reasoning takes place within the context
of some traditional mode of thought, transcending through criticism and invention the limitations of what hitherto been reasoned in that
tradition; this is as true of modern physics as of
medieval logic. Moreover when a tradition is
in good order it is always partially constituted
by an argument about the goods the pursuit
8
9
Although MacIntyre does not offer a conclusive defense nor a systematical description of the notion of rationality involved in the arguments presented by After Virtue, one finds nevertheless important
indications. A first glimpse into the necessary constituents of an effective rational argumentation in this regard is schematically offered in
Chapter 5 (cf. ibidem: 52ss.). This scheme is then more fully articulated
in its paradigmatic Aristotelian version in the chapter on “Aristotle’s
Account of the Virtues” (Chapter 12). MacIntyre finds, however, that
Aristotle’s account of practical reason needs some important revision
and complementation if it is going to perform in the contemporary
world what it allegedly performed in the classical and mediaeval
world. In Chapter 15, MacIntyre introduces his own updated understanding of the accountability of action as linked to the necessarily narrative (historical) intelligibility of action. But MacIntyre believes that
this gradual approach to an updated concept of practical rationality capable of settling moral disagreement under contemporary circumstances is still insufficient (cf. ibidem: 260). Moreover, as we shall immediately see, he does not believe either that he has yet given an argument
of the sort required in order to prove the superiority of an Aristotelian
moral theory.
Already in chapter 4 (“The Predecessor Culture and the Enlightenment Project of Justifying Morality”), while presenting his interpretation of Kierkegaard, MacIntyre refers to the modern parallel contraposition of reason and authority. He suggests that “the notion of
authority and the notion of reason” are, on the contrary, “intimately
connected (ibidem: 42).”
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of which gives to that tradition its particular
point and purpose.
So when an institution [...] is the bearer of a tradition of practice or practices, its common life
will be partly, but in a centrally important way,
constituted by a continuous argument [...]. Traditions when vital, embody continuities of conflict. (Ibidem: 222). 10
The extent of the crisis viz. catastrophe that
MacIntyre is intended to overcome is so pervasive that his task seems each time more difficult
and more ambitious. It seems that in order to
argue for his concept of rationality, he has also
to argue for the acceptance of a certain tradition
and the standards implicit in its telos. A circle
becomes gradually more evident. The acceptability of his concept of rationality presupposes
the acceptance of certain standards which belong to a tradition which is no longer alive or, at
least, a tradition from which modern liberalism
has radically detached itself long ago ex hypothesi. It is clear that, according to Macintyre, a
certain tradition has its own standards of rationality and of what excels in view of its purported ends. Radical differences in moral standards
and in standards of rationality are ultimately
differences pertaining the attachment to a given tradition. But how can one argue in favor
of one tradition and against other? Moreover,
how can one argue in favor of a tradition that,
as the thesis goes, has been dissolved? Stand
history in such a way to our disposition as to
allow for such revival?
As a matter of fact, MacIntyre substantially qualifies his initial disquieting suggestion
of a catastrophic disruption of the premodern
world. After all, he tells us in his account of the
heroic and the classical society, the pre modern
tradition is not completely destroyed. It can
10
141
We will later return to the important notion of conflict in its relation to
tradition. For the time being it has still to be determined how far does
After Virtue go in the fundamental task of defending the concept of
a historically argumentative rationality that would allow to proceed
to the further task of leading his liberal opponents to an agreement
regarding the thesis that the possibility of rational moral agreement
can only be restored by an appeal to the superiority of an Aristotelian
tradition. It will turn out that Macintyre’s argument for an historical
conception of rationality has, besides the already highlighted systematic strand, also a historical aspect which he develops in Whose Justice? Which Rationality?
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even provide some firm basis for his argument.
This is the sense of attempt to show, on the one
hand, that Aristotle “provides a central point of
focus” of a whole tradition (ibidem: 119) which
is originally rooted in heroic epic societies and
dramatically developed in the classical world,
while showing, on the other hand, that “even
heroic society is still inescapably a part of us
all” and that narrating its history is “narrating
a history that is peculiarly our own history” (ibidem: 130)? The course of history turns out to be
not so discontinuous as MacIntyre’s rhetorical
image of the ‘catastrophe’ at the beginning of
the modern world suggests11.
MacIntyre immediately foresees an objection to his conclusion which, despite its centrality, he, astonishingly enough, has to yield to.
However, this objection points to an omission
which renders his task as yet unaccomplished
rather than to a positive failure which renders his
enterprise as misconceived. MacIntyre explicitly describes this omission as merely provisory.
[...] when an issue is settled, it is often because the contending parties -or someone from
among them- have stood back from their dispute and asked in a systematic way what the
appropriate rational procedures are for settling this particular kind of dispute. It is my
own view that the time has come once more
when it is imperative to perform this task for
moral philosophy; but I do not pretend to have
embarked upon it on this present book. My
negative and positive evaluations of particular
arguments do indeed presuppose a systematic,
although here unstated, account of rationality.
2. After Virtue: MacIntyre’s
Postponed Task
But we no longer need to agonize in the
search for the ultimate argumentative basis of
MacIntyre’s After Virtue. One of the most striking features of his book lies in the final acknowledgment that it is absent. MacIntyre directly
deals with these issues near the end of After Virtue. MacIntyre makes here a clear statement of
the conclusions he has been driving to.
My own conclusion is very clear. It is that on
the one hand we still, in spite of the efforts of
three centuries of moral philosophy and one of
sociology, lack any coherent rationally defensible statement of a liberal individualist point of
view; and that, on the other hand, the Aristotelian tradition can be restated in a way that restores intelligibly and rationally to our moral and
social attitudes and commitments. (Ibidem: 259).
11
Now, since MacIntyre sustains that the premodern world is somehow
still a real part of our ethical life, i.e. since he suggests that we still
appeal to a premodern way of structuring ethical action (for in what
other relevant sense would be then the premodern tradition alive?),
despite the image of morality given by modern moral philosophy,
then he has at the same time to argue that the latter’s basic concepts
are conceptual fictions (cf. ibidem: 64) which have been incapable to
achieve a real replacement of the preexistent structures of ethical
agency. The reasons presented by modern moral philosophy as the
foundation of moral action are, in fact no reasons at all, i.e. a masquerade (cf. ibidem: 9), so that there are either no reasons at all or the
reasons lie unknowingly elsewhere. Emotivism is the doctrine which,
rightly aware of the fallacious character of such reasons as given by
modern moral philosophy, illegitimately takes sides for the first part
of this disjunction, i.e. it concludes that the modern incapability for
giving a rational justification of moral action is not simply a historical episode but corresponds to the very nature of morality as such.
Impersonal, rational justification is just the disguise for unarguable
preferences and choices.
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It is this account -to be given in a subsequent
book- which I shall hope to deploy, and will
almost certainly need to deploy, against those
whose criticism of my central thesis rests chiefly or wholly upon a different and incompatible
evaluation of the arguments. A motley part of
defenders of liberal individualism [...] are likely
to offer objections of this kind. (Ibidem: 260).
And they have certainly done as the criticism that MacIntyre has to encounter in the
Postscript to the Second Edition happens to reveal.
(But more of this later). MacIntyre recognizes
the limits of his enterprise in After Virtue and
refers us to his next book (Whose Justice? Which
Rationality? 12) if we want to go beyond them. As
yet, let’s stress it once again, his argument can
only be convincing for those who share a similar concept of what a rational argument is but
it is precisely his main contenders who not only
would eventually reject the content of these or
those of his evaluative premises and standards
as unacceptable, but will straightway even ob12
142
In the introduction to this work Macintyre addresses the problem in
the following words: “Fundamental disagreements about the character of rationality are bound to be particularly difficult to resolve. For
already in initially proceeding in one way rather than another to approach the disputed questions, those who proceed will have to assume that these particulars procedures are the ones which it is rational
to follow (MacIntyre 1988: 4).”
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ject against his standards of rationally. A reason
of a Kantian or analytic type will be deaf to MacIntyre’s genetic arguments and it is this type of
reason which prevails in the liberal side of the
fence. We seem to be faced with an historical
argument whose validity still depends on some
unfulfilled conditions.
Now, even if it is now clear that we are not
to expect in After Virtue a ‘systematic account’
of the type of rationality employed in the defense of the moral theory proposed in it, we
may still inquire further about the nature of
this yet unargued type of rationality, or what
comes to be the same, about the character of the
arguments used in After Virtue. Is MacIntyre, as
I have as yet just assumed, expecting his genealogy to play the role of critique and if so under
what conditions? Is MacIntyre assuming that,
if his particular type of historical explanation
is a convincing one, the positions thereby explained will be then refuted 13?
The first type of criticism that MacIntyre
has to meet in the first section of his Postscript to
the Second Edition(“The Relationship of Philosophy to History”) refer exactly to this issue. MacIntyre’s reply shows more clearly than the first
edition of his book what we were actually to expect of After Virtue. While acknowledging his
use of systematical i.e. analytical arguments in
After Virtue (cf. ibidem: 269), he does also stress
the limited role they play in practical philosophy in general and in his book in particular.
Analytic philosophy [...] can very occasionally
produce practically conclusive results of negative kind. It can show in few cases that just too
much incoherence and inconsistency is involved in some position for any reasonable person
to continue to hold it. But it can never establish
the rational acceptability of any particular position in cases where each of the alternative ri13
val positions available has sufficient range and
scope and the adherents of each are willing to
pay the price necessary to secure coherence
and consistency. (Ibidem: 267).
MacIntyre explicitly rejects the idea that
such arguments are sufficient “to establish what
is true or false and what is reasonable to believe
in moral philosophy (ibidem: 269),” while he, on
the other hand, sustains the relevance of an historical approach by holding
not only that historical inquiry is required in
order to establish what a particular point of
view is, but also that it is in its historical encounter that any given point of view establishes or
fails to establish its rational superiority relative
to its particular rivals in some specific contexts.
(Ibidem: 269).
The type of historicism defended by MacIntyre prevents us from appealing to an ahistorical and timeless reason allegedly invested
with “universal and necessary principles” and
allegedly capable of evaluating any theoretical
or practical proposals independently from the
particular historical context and to the particular tradition of inquiry from which they obtain
their general aims and their general standards.
Only when imbedded in this context can a theory be adequately understood and its rational
superiority subsequently be evaluated. One may
ask at this point, even if it seems quite otiose,
whether this evaluation of the ‘rational superiority’ of a theory is itself rational and if it is in the
same sense in which the theory will appear as
rationally superior. After denying the rationality
of this evaluation either in a Kantian or an analytical sense of rationality MacIntyre suggests
that this kind of evaluation of moral theories
is not different from the evaluation of scientific
theories. According to this parallelism:
If this were the case, the refutation will come from what history reveals, but what it reveals, MacIntyre would be liable to the charge of
incurring into the naturalistic fallacy of expecting to derive values from
fact. Macintyre, however, explicitly rejects the dichotomy facts-values
and also, accordingly, the “no ought from is” principle. MacIntyre’s
history of moral philosophy is acknowledgedly informed by standards
(MacIntyre 1984: 3). What standards are these? Is he in ultimate instance appealing to such standards on which there is still some agreement
despite the pervasiveness of the crisis? And if not, how does its acceptance by the liberal reader come about?
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if some particular moral scheme has successfully transcended the limitations of its predecessors and in so doing provided the best means
available for understanding those predecessors
to date and has then confronted successive challenges from a number of rival points of view
while avoiding their weaknesses and limita-
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tions and has provided the best explanation so
far of those weaknesses and limitations, then
we have the best possible reason to have confidence that future challenges will also be met
successfully, that the principles which define
the core of a moral scheme are enduring principles. And just this is the achievement that I
ascribe to Aristotle’s fundamental scheme in
After Virtue. (Ibidem: 270).
This is the positive and constructive task of
After Virtue (chapters 10ss.) that follows his direct critique of modern moral philosophy (chapters 2-9). MacIntyre’s critique is two-sided. On
the one hand, there is an immanent (ahistorical)
critique which results from applying to modern
moral philosophy the test of consistency but can
only serve a limited refutative purpose14. On the
other hand, there is a critique which provides
the grounds for understanding those failures [the failures of the protagonists of the Enlightenment] [...] out of the resources afforded
by an Aristotelian account of the virtues, which
in just the way that I have described, turns out
to emerge from its specific historic encounters
as the best theory so far. (Ibidem: 271).
We may here overlook the first kind of
critique since it presumably makes exclusive use of the purely negative, i.e. refutative,
power of non-historical analytic argumentation. We turn to the second kind of critique, the
one which MacIntyre might claim as specific
of his own philosophy, the one which should
exhibit the rational superiority of an Aristotelian moral theory and should represent the
decisive move of After Virtue towards securing
the possibility of a rationally settlement of contemporary moral disagreement. But MacIntyre
himself warns us again in his Postscript, as he
had already done in the last pages of After Virtue, from looking back to it with the hope of
finding the full argument for the contention
that the Aristotelian theory is “the best theory
14
so far”: “But note that I did not assert in After
Virtue that I had as yet sustained that claim, nor
do I claim that now (ibidem: 271).”What was
then the book to accomplish? We have jumped
from the introductory chapter to the last pages
and the Postscript to After Virtue and we know
that we do not need to go back in order to look
for the complete solution of the problem presented. But perhaps we can find whether and
how After Virtue accomplishes the task of paving the way for a solution. The question to ask,
within the limits of After Virtue, is then to what
extent MacIntyre’s argument would be valid if
one simply anticipates and takes for granted
the positive outcome of MacIntyre’s enterprise
of justifying his own concept of rationality15. Is
MacIntyre’s argument satisfactory according to
his own standards of a story-telling rationality?
Are MacIntyre’s stories cogent as stories?16
15
16
MacIntyre concedes that he makes use of this kind of arguments:
“when Frankena correctly says that on occasion I employ arguments
drawn from analytical philosophy to establish that a particular theory
or set of theories fails, he imputes to me nothing that is inconsistent
either with my historicism or with my rejection of the view that
analytic philosophy can never provide sufficient grounds for the assertion of any positive standpoint in moral philosophy ibidem: 269).”
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Although MacIntyre does not offer a conclusive defense nor a systematical description of the notion of rationality involved in the arguments presented by After Virtue, one finds nevertheless important
indications. A first glimpse into the necessary constituents of an effective rational argumentation in this regard is schematically offered in
Chapter 5 (cf. ibidem: 52ss.). This scheme is then more fully articulated
in its paradigmatic Aristotelian version in the chapter on “Aristotle’s
Account of the Virtues” (Chapter 12). MacIntyre finds, however, that
Aristotle’s account of practical reason needs some important revision
and complementation if it is going to perform in the contemporary
world what it allegedly performed in the classical and mediaeval world.
In Chapter 15, MacIntyre introduces his own updated understanding of
the accountability of action as linked to the necessarily narrative (historical) intelligibility of action. But MacIntyre believes that this gradual approach to an updated concept of practical rationality capable
of settling moral disagreement under contemporary circumstances is
still insufficient (cf. ibidem: .260).
Disagreement at this level can take two different forms. On the one
hand, as already suggested, since MacIntyre’s historical accounts are
themselves informed by some moral standards (cf. ibidem: 3), disagreement may arise from disagreement on the moral standards involved
in his historical accounts. One might be tempted to distinguish this
kind of disagreement from disagreement concerning the descriptive
content of such historical accounts. But MacIntyre’s critique of the
traditional distinction between facts and values prevents us from making any clear-cut parallel distinction in the sense alluded. One may,
for example, express his agreement with the central role assigned to
the individual and his freedom in the modern world but claim to disagree, however, in the negative evaluation that MacIntyre gives of
this fact. However, this ‘normative’ divergence cannot easily be assumed to be referring to the same reality. For one may disagree to a
certain extent with MacIntyre’s characterization of the modern individual. One could disagree with MacIntyre´s evaluation of modern
individualism simply because one has a descriptively different and
therefore less dramatic concept of the modern self as MacIntyre has.
In that case the evaluation will be knowingly or unknowingly falling
on a different phenomenon. Thus, in order to be able to define the
divergence as a difference in standards one would have to assume
that one is referring to the same object of evaluation and this can only
be known by confirming that the descriptions given on both sides are
the same. (The fusion of descriptive and normative components must
have its limit precisely if one wants to establish the existence of moral
disagreement). Of course, the difference in standards can also be expressed not by way of pronouncements of the form “x + (normative)
predicate” (where our concept of ‘x’ can still involve some evaluative component as in MacIntyre’s functional concepts in which case
the evaluative moment of the sentence does not need to be expressed
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It is then convenient to interrupt the previous discussion at this point and finally have a
look at MacIntyre’s argument in order to evaluate it in its actual development. I will simply
take for granted both that there is in fact a crisis signalized by moral disagreement and that
a historical reflection on the origins of such
disagreement is an important condition for
its rational settlement and will confine myself
to the issue of his historical characterization
and evaluation of the nature of contemporary
moral disagreement. SinceMacIntyre’scharacter
ization of this phenomenon is both conceptually and normatively a negative one, reference
is unavoidable both to a correlatively implied
positive notion of possible agreement and to a
contrasting description of pre-modern moral
disagreement17.
3. The Blame of Autonomy
In the first part of After Virtue (chapters
1-9) MacIntyre is interested in showing that the
Enlightenment project of a rational justification
of moral principles failed, why it was doomed
to fail and what the consequences of this failure
are. What the first point of this agenda is concerned, MacIntyre can rely, on the one hand,
on a criticism of those philosophers who believed that such justification was possible and
advanced a proposal in this respect (Diderot,
Hume, Kant). His critique is largely an immanent critique which, as we suggested before,
simply applies to them the test of consistency.
On the other hand, MacIntyre can take advantage of the conclusions drawn by a growing
number of philosophers, from Kierkegaard on,
17
in an explicitly evaluative predicate) but by way of explicit definitions
of the form “‘P’ is (def.) Y” or “ ‘x’ is def. Y” where P stands for an
evaluative predicate, x stands for a normatively laden ‘descriptive’
concept (e.g. a functional concept) and Y for a definition. However, it
is clear that MacIntyre does not proceed this way. Such a procedure
would run against his historical approach to moral justification.
MacIntyre proceeds to describe moral disagreement immediately after the introductory chapter of After Virtue. It is remarkable that MacIntyre refers in its title to “The Nature of Moral Disagreement Today
and the Claims of Emotivism”(ibidem: 6, italics added). This suggests
that moral disagreement has itself different historical manifestations,
this meaning not that the contents of moral disagreement historically
diverge, but that the character, i.e. the nature of the disagreement itself
is submitted to historical modification. MacIntyre will in fact make
a sharp distinction, essential to his argument, between the nature of
contemporary (viz. modern) moral disagreement and the nature of
moral disagreement (e.g. tragic conflict) in pre-modern societies (cf.
ibidem: 224-5).
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about the non-rational character of basic moral
principles and choices (Intuitionism, Emotivism, etc.) since he can present them as driving
an adequate conclusion in the face of the factual situation of contemporary moral debate
(though illegitimately extrapolating this conclusion as a valid one for moral discourse as such).
MacIntyre takes Nietzsche to be the most lucid
exponent of this conclusion and, therefore, of the
related criticism of the Enlightenment project as
a failure18. But in order to show that this conclusion, so valid it is if restrictedly applied to modern philosophy, cannot be generalized as valid
for moral discourse as such, MacIntyre is committed to the task of showing that such a rational
justification is possible. And it is possible since
it was already available, MacIntyre claims, in
the tradition of Aristotelianism. It was, furthermore, the tradition immediately preceding the
rise of the modern world and, hence, the one
whose disruption explains in virtue of its disruption why the Enlightenment emerged and
had to fail. The failure of the Enlightenment is
explained by a lack.
Now, since the first part of After Virtue
(chapters 1-9) is both engaged (what finally will
turn out to be a single task) in an historically
explanation of the failure of the Enlightenment
project and in a historical refutation of the generalization implicit in emotivism, a significant
part of MacIntyre’s constructive criticism is already anticipated before being more cogently
and fully developed in the second part (chapters 10-18). The first part of After Virtue already
points to what modern moral philosophy so
badly lacks. It lacks “some account of the human telos”(ibidem: 52)19 “a teleological view of
human nature” (ibidem: 54). If this basic contention of MacIntyre’s argument is right, this absence should explain both the absence of a type
of rational moral discourse capable of creating
agreement and the emergence of the related
claims of emotivism as a moral philosophy. It
18
19
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“My own argument obliges me to agree with Nietzsche that the philosophers of the Enlightenment never succeeded in proving grounds for
doubting his central thesis [that all rational vindications of morality
manifestly fail].” (Ibidem: 117).
An obvious exception is utilitarianism. But MacIntyre dismisses the
idea of utility as a telos for being just another fiction of modern moral
philosophy(cf. ibidem: 64ss.).
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should also explain all those salient features
of modern culture which represent, according to MacIntyre, the ‘social content’ and the
‘social context’ of emotivism20 conceived as
the last critical stage in the declining process
of the modern world. This sociological environment of emotivism includes such features
as the gradual obliteration of any “distinction
between manipulative and non-manipulative
social relationships” (ibidem: 24), the parallel
expansion of bureaucratic rationality (the rationality of “matching means to ends”(ibidem:
.25), the ascent of effectiveness as a major criterion of practical justification (cf. ibidem: 26), the
cultural expansion of the aesthetical attitude
(in the Kierkegaardian sense of the word ‘aesthetic’) which views the world solely as a series
of opportunities for enjoyment and whose last
enemy is boredom (cf. ibidem: 25).
A crucial thesis of After Virtue is to be
found in MacIntyre’s attempt to establish an
intimate connection between all these ingredients of the social environment of contemporary
emotivism21 and the hegemony of “the specifically modern self” which, as he puts it, evades
“any necessary identification with any particular contingent state of affairs” (ibidem: 31). This
lack of (social) identification accounts for its lack
of normative criteria. The modern ego is thus
given to criticize and relativize everything on
account of its ubiquity, of its ‘capacity’ for arbitrarily adopting any point of view (ibidem:32).22
By the same token, it can assume any role because, as MacIntyre paraphrases Sartre, this self
“is in and for itself nothing” (ibidem:). Now,
this modern self with all the practical pathological consequences of its uprootedness, is no
other than the “individual moral agent, freed
from hierarchy and teleology” (ibidem: 62), the
20
21
22
“But I treated that theory [emotivism G.M.] not only as a philosophical analysis, but also as a sociological hypothesis.(ibidem: 72).”
This connection between emotivism, aestheticism and bureaucratic
rationality sees MacIntyre perfectly expressed on a theoretical level
by the link between Nietzsche and Weber: “ [...] I have also noticed
that Nietzsche’s central thesis was presupposed by Weber’s central categories of thought.” (ibidem: 114). “So Weber and Nietzsche together
provide us with the key theoretical articulations of the contemporary
social order; but what they delineate so clearly are the large-scale dominant features of the modern social landscape.” (ibidem: 114s.). For
the ‘small-scale counterparts’ of this large-scale picture MacIntyre refers to E.Goffman (ibidem).
This attitude has been catalogued by literary criticism as that of Romantic irony.
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social counterpart of the absolutely autonomous self which Kant presented as the agent of
every action which we could legitimately call
‘moral’. This is MacIntyre’s both conceptually
and normatively negative characterization of
the modern individual. The history of the emergence of the autonomous modern self —a history which has been described again and again
by historians as the history of an unvaluable
emancipation and liberation from the bounds
of authority and tradition— is, for MacIntyre,
not the history of an achievement but the history of a loss (ibidem:60).
Precisely at this point —the issue of freedom
as the core of modern moral philosophy— it
becomes altogether evident that the history he
has to tell is a history informed by standards.
Macintyre’s criticism of modernity relies first
of all in our perceiving the negative character
of emotivism in its philosophical and sociological level. Through the causal connection established by MacIntyre between emotivism as the
result of the failure to give a rational justification of moral principles and the basic assumptions of modern moral philosophy, Macintyre
is inviting us to a critique of the latter. But how
can MacIntyre convincingly show the existence of
such connection between the modern concept
of the self and of freedom (as it has been largely
modeled by modern philosophy) and such negative sociological phenomena? Does After Virtue afford a conclusive analysis in this respect?
Again the immense scope that MacIntyre
is committed to cover in After Virtue seems to
have a proportionally negative effect on those
stages of his argument which require a more
detailed and conclusive discussion. After Virtue looks in such passages more like the compressed draft of a vast enterprise. Others have
spent their whole lives spinning similarly comprehensive arguments. And in fact MacIntyre
is relying, in part explicitly, in part implicitly, on
such previous labor. This obliged reliance on the
conclusions of other large arguments seems to
be, by the way, the unavoidable price that contemporary intellectuals have to pay in order to
be qualified for the participation on the current
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global evaluation of the Project of the Enlightenment23. Macintyre, anyway, is relying on a
not fully argued or not quite explicitly shown
essential connection between the adequate Weberian cum Nietzschean description of our present socio-cultural reality and all the precedent
mainstream of the history of modern philosophy? 24. But he seems to be aware of his debts.
As late as the end of the fifth chapter (“Why the
Enlightenment Project had to Fail?”) one finds
him giving expression to the awareness that the
standards that inform his just delineated picture of the pre-modern state of affairs as a state
of order are still unargued.
Yet to put matters in this way is to anticipate in an unjustified way. For I am apparently
taken it for granted that these changes are indeed to be characterized in terms of such concepts as those of survival, loss of context and
consequence loss of clarity; whereas as I noted
earlier, many of those who lived through this
change in our predecessor culture saw it as a
deliverance both from the burdens of traditional theism and the confusions of theological modes of thought. What I have described
in terms of a loss of traditional structure and
content was seen by the most articulate of the
philosophical spokesmen as the achievement
by the self of its proper autonomy [...].
Yet whether we view this decisive moment of
change as loss or liberation as a transition to
autonomy or to anomie, two features of it need
to be emphasized. (Ibidem: 60s.).
What MacIntyre subsequently proposes
as a way of evaluating the signification of the
transition to modernity is an examination both
of the “social and political consequences of the
change” (ibidem: 61) and of the new conceptual
setting, i.e. “the variety of not always coher23
24
One only needs to have a quick glance at the references of the contributions of e.g. F. Lyotard and J. Habermas to this debate.
Be it as it may, this strand of his argument makes altogether clear
his unacknowledged commitment to a certain tradition of thinkers
who have described the contemporary crisis along similar lines: e.g.
the Frankfurt School (Habermas excluded) and Heidegger. Couldn’t
have MacIntyre imbedded more explicitly his practice within this
tradition? This could have led him to elevate his position beyond already achieved standpoints within the “historically extended, socially
embodied argument” that such tradition as any other tradition represents (ibidem: 222). His failure to do so compels the reader to fall back
to objections already stated in the long argument and to give thus nurture to the decried crisis of interminable moral disagreement.
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ent beliefs and concepts” that the invention
of the individual required. Thus, MacIntyre
insists in proposing an evaluation of modernity in terms of what he alleges to be some
of its actual historical consequences. However,
MacIntyre immediately concedes that the history of the political consequences of the transition to autonomy or anomie “is a history yet
to be written” (ibidem). Nevertheless, the next
chapter, entitled “Consequences of the Failure
of the Enlightenment Project”, is introduces by
the following announcement: “What was then
invented was the individual and to the question
of what that invention amounted to and its part
in creating our own emotivist culture we must
now turn” (ibidem). MacIntyre proceeds, in fact,
to present those concepts upon which contemporary moral discourse is ultimately based, i.e.
the concept of utility and the concept of human rights, as incommensurable moral fictions.
By ‘incommensurable’ MacIntyre alludes once
again to the fact that they raise claims that cannot be weighed against each other although
they constitute the core of the premises on
which contemporary moral arguments are ultimately based (cf. ibidem: 70). Given their incommensurability they give rise to insoluble moral
disagreement; given their fictional character
despite the apparent objectivity that they support, they provide the ground for emotivism.
Now, as we have said, all these phenomena are to be accounted by the disruption of
teleological thought at the beginning of modernity. On the conceptual level the incommensurability, the unaccountability and the
fictional character of the basic notions of moral
discourse (e.g. ‘utility’, ‘rights’) is explained as
the result of their complete lack of teleological
context and as the result of their being the substitute “for the concepts of an older and more
traditional morality” (ibidem: 70). These older
concepts were functional concepts which, in
virtue of their being imbedded in a teleological
context, allowed to overbridge the gap between
is and ought (cf. ibidem: 56ss.). The most important of them was the functional concept of man
which contained the nowadays missing teleological account of human nature (cf. ibidem: 52).
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Without such an account the virtue ethics that
preceded modern morality loses its most essential support. For the virtues are conceived as
those dispositions which enable man to reach
or near his telos. Now, once modern thought
starts to ban the notion of a human telos from
practical thought, the sociological counterpart
of this development also gets off the ground.
Since this telos had been defined for the pre
modern man in terms of the task that he was to
perform in his society, the modern self “is now
thought of as lacking any necessary social identity [...] the self is now thought of as criterionless, because the kind of telos in terms of which
it once judged and acted is no longer thought
to be credible” (ibidem: 33). The rejection of teleological thought gives birth to the modern
individual freed from all social bonds and hierarchies now felt as restrictive (cf. ibidem: 34).
But what motivated the modern critique of
teleology? Although MacIntyre insists that the
history of political and social change cannot be
dissociated from the history of philosophy and
that, hence, “the transition into modernity was
a transition both in theory and practice and a
single transition at that” (ibidem: 61), the fact
is that when it comes to explain the historical
grounds for the disruption of the teleological
conception of man and for the parallel emergence of the modern self, he just focuses on
the conceptual side of this development. But
even on this level MacIntyre fails to make a
clear distinction between what in his account
is to be taken as a primal cause of the disruption or already as a certain consequence of it.
One has even the impression that MacIntyre is
exclusively concerned in pointing out the consequences of the disruption and not at all interested in a detailed explanation of the causes
of the disruption itself. And just because he as
a theoretician omits any account in this respect
we cannot obviously conclude that the process
itself was ultimately unmotivated25. So what
25
This issue has important consequences for MacIntyre’s conception
of modern moral philosophy as a mistake. For modern moral philosophy can obviously be interpreted by its defenders as an attempt to
correct the shortcomings of pre-modern morality for which MacIntyre
could be charged of being symptomatically blind. Couldn’t one count
as Macintyre’s failure his reluctance to view the origin of modernity
as something emerging also from an “historically extended, socially
imbedded argument” (ibidem: 222)?
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are the historical grounds for such catastrophe
as presented by MacIntyre, if at all? How far
does MacIntyre go beyond the initial metaphor
of this catastrophe as a completely unmotivated accident emerging from “a series of environmental disasters” (ibidem: 1)?
In those passages where one can find some
information relevant to this question MacIntyre
suggests that the abandonment of the teleological framework of pre modern ethical thinking
had to do with the appearance of a new conception of reason (cf. ibidem: 53) which was
believed to be incapable to grasp ends and to
comprehend essences. This new type of reason
gave birth to an anti-Aristotelian science (cf. ibidem: 54), i.e. a mechanistic science (whose basic
assumptions MacIntyre describes in chapter 7).
In the level of morality this new type of reason
confined practical thought to the a mere calculus which only decides about the appropriate
means to given and unarguable means. MacIntyre is visibly talking about the appearance
of what the Frankfurt School, influenced in this
respect by Weber, had characterized as the expansion of the limited concept of instrumental reason. But whereas the Frankfurt School
traced the origin of instrumental reason all the
way back to the very origins of Western culture
(see, for instance, the essay on Odysseus in the
Dialectic of Enlightenment) and conceived the
history of the modern world as the history not of
its appearance but of its exclusive hegemony, or
whereas Heidegger finds the seeds of modern
technique already present in the main concepts
of Greek thought, MacIntyre just readily conveys the idea that instrumental reason made its
first appearance at the beginning of the modern world. In the picture given by MacIntyre
of the pre modern world there seems to be no
space at all for types of rationality other than
a teleologically informed rationality. But even
if MacIntyre would happen to concede the pre
modern existence of that type of rationality
which he takes to be characteristic of the modern world, even if would qualify his claim as to
mean that the specificity of the modern world
is not so much given by the sudden coming
to be but by the unprecedented hegemony of
such type of rationality, he still owes an expla-
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Macintyre’s After Virtue and the disagreement about disagreement
nation for the fact of its sudden overriding role.
MacIntyre seems to have no other explanation
as that it was a completely unjustified mistake.
This impression emerges from the fact that in
the long conversation that constitutes, according to his own conception, the course of history
he has left no room for the arguments that the
modern world once brought and still brings
against the ancient and the medieval world.
(He believes perhaps that they are sufficiently
well known and that they do not deserve being
once again seriously weighed). No wonder that
at the end of his book he himself is skeptical
about the power of his argument in convincing
its rivals. MacIntyre’s account of modern morals isa‘dialectic’ of the Enlightenment in which,
however, one of the poles of the dialogue has
no contribution to make. The other standpoint
can be then restored with some minor, if any,
qualifications. Aufhebung comes to mean for the
one pole complete dissolution and for the other
integral conservation.
4. The Problem: Second-Order
Disagreement or Conflict about
Conflict
All this seems to imply that MacIntyre is
committed to a presentation of premodern ethics as something that was exempted from any
of such problematic phenomema as conceptual
incommensurability, rationally insoluble moral
disagreement, individualism, emotivism, etc.
But the fact is that MacIntyre presents a more
complex image of the pre modern world than
this might suggest. Striking as this may appear,
MacIntyre uses the same or similar formulations to describe the crisis of fifth and fourth
century Athens as he used in describing the
crisis of the modern world. In relation to this
period, MacIntyre refers explicitly to a situation of ‘moral disagreement’ (ibidem: 133) “incoherence in the use of evaluative language”
(ibidem: 131), “incoherence in moral standards
and vocabulary” (ibidem: 132), “rival and incompatible demands” (ibidem: 132). MacIntyre
is even ready to acknowledge the existence of a
Sophoclean self that “transcends the limitations
of social roles and is able to put these roles into
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question” (ibidem: 145). If it were still necessary
one could perhaps complete this picture by
adding to it an Alcibiades as example of individualism and a Thrasymachus as an example
of emotivism. But all this picture needs an essential qualification which makes, according
to MacIntyre, all the difference of the world.
MacIntyre clearly underlines the fact that fifth
century Athens still operated on the conceptual
level within the teleological framework that
Greek and later medieval ethics never were to
abandon. Some pressing questions immediately arise at this point. If all these phenomena already took place to a certain extent in the Greek
world and if we are to give of them (and their
cause) an equally negative assessment as MacIntyre gave of the analogous phenomena (and
their cause) in the contemporary world, then
where is their cause to be found? MacIntyre is
obviously compelled to exempt the teleological
framework in itself from any blame, unless he
wants to be blamed himself of an incoherent account. There is however still the possibility that
these phenomena, even if they stand in some
connection to the teleological framework, turn
out to be after all, despite their similar description, essentially different, particularly in their value, either precisely on the account of their being
imbedded in such framework (but this would
make the presence of teleological thought a
value in itself) or in virtue of some other undisclosed factor.
But MacIntyre could reply that he is not at
all claiming that teleological ethics as such or as it
existed before the Greek Enlightenment avoids
the existence of moral disagreement, conceptual incommensurability etc. (This would be
by all means problematical on the light of his
own exposition). One should perhaps define
MacIntyre’s claim more precisely by saying
that he is arguing that the Aristotelian version
of teleological ethics avoids the appearance of
such negative phenomena26. It is indeed MacIntyre’s clear intention to represent Aristotle’s ethics as a response, as a certain answer to
the situation of moral disagreement and grave
26
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If this were Macintyre’s thesis one would have to review the history of
those societies living under the influence of an Aristotelian type ethics
in order to see whether they were exempted from the experience of
being incapable to solve moral disagreement in a rational way, etc.
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disorder of the moral language which fifth and
fourth century Athens had to face. Aristotle is
not to be interpreted as the mere systematical
exponent of the putative tradition which might
have given rise to such crisis. Aristotle’s account
of the virtues is interpreted by MacIntyre as a
theoretical reaction to this critical situation, i.e.
“a response to incoherence” (ibidem: 135). MacIntyre would be thus rather suggesting to take
Aristotelianism as such refined version of teleological thought that was already in its inception
an elaborate response to problems similar to
the one now faced by modern society. Hence,
one could conclude, the breakdown of Aristotelianism at the beginning of the modern world
was above all the breakdown of a certain way
of dealing with the (historically recurrent) critical phenomenon of radical moral disagreement
and its related pathology. The birth of modernity lies in the rejection of a certain framework
for the treatment of moral dissension.
However the first chapters of the second
part of After Virtue, that is, the first part of MacIntyre’s constructive effort, are again deceiving.
Since he does not explicitly explain the specific
reasons for the Athenian crisis nor he makes
clear the identity or the difference between its
features and those of our present crisis, it cannot
be clear how Aristotle’s ethics or, for that effect,
the virtue ethics that MacIntyre creatively derives from it, can be said to be a solution for this
or that crisis. MacIntyre, it seems to me, sets
himself to fill the first of these two the gaps of
After Virtue in the first chapters of his later Whose
Justice? Which Rationality? Macintyre opens this
book with the idea that “the history of any society is [...] in key part the history of an extended
conflict or set of conflicts. And as it is with societies, so it is with traditions (MacIntyre 1988:
12).”27 And some lines further he introduces, as
27
MacIntyre adds immediately: “A tradition is an argument extended
through time in which certain fundamental agreements are defined
and redefined [...]” (ibidem). Macintyre is thus suggesting that although
a tradition is necessarily propelled by certain conflicts that which defines it as a certain tradition is the existence of “certain fundamental
agreement.” MacIntyre’s thesis in After Virtue can be then reformulated in the idea that the real problem in the modern world is not the
existence of conflict in general but the existence of a certain kind of
basic conflict, namely, the one reflected in fundamental or radical disagreement. For this kind of disagreement goes so far as to undermine
the very basis of tradition. MacIntyre’s critique of the Enlightenment
is a critique of its critique and actual lack of tradition. “Of what did
the Enlightenment deprive us? What the Enlightenment made us for
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in After Virtue, Aristotle as the exponent of a tradition which, as any other tradition (according
to Macintyre) is aimed at defining and redefining fundamental agreement:
We inherit from the conflicts of the social and
cultural order of the Athenian polis a number of
mutually incompatible and antagonistic traditions concerning justice and practical rationality. The two with which I shall be concerned
received their classical statements from Thucydides as well as from certain of the sophists
and teachers of rhetoric and from Aristotle respectively. (Ibidem: 13).
Macintyre seems to be here acknowledging the existence of fundamental disagreement
in fifth and fourth century Athens. If this is the
case then Macintyre’s specific critique of the
modern Enlightenment cannot be said to fall
on the existence of radical moral disagreement
(as the first pages of After Virtue misleadingly
imply) and consequently on those causes which
give raise to it in the modern world (at least not
in virtue of their being such causes). It must
lie then presumably in the way in which such
fundamental type of conflict and disagreement
(through which a tradition may lose all coherence and dissolve) is handled. In this is what
Macintyre is really concerned about then he is
actually interested in a second-order disagreement: a disagreement in the way to deal with
disagreement. Modernity’s dismissal of tradition should be then interpreted as one way of
reacting towards radical disagreement, moreover,
as one which was born out of the conflict against
and the rejection of an alternative (Aristotelian)
way of facing radical disagreement.
This seems to me the only way of avoiding
the temptation, into which Macintyre himself
drives the reader, of accusing Macintyre’s argument of certain incoherences. This way out is
even more compelling if we take into account
what Macintyre finally (in Whose Justice? has to
say about the origin of the Athenian fifth and
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the most part blind to and what we now need to recover is, so shall I
argue, a conception of rational inquiry as embodied in a tradition, a
conception according to which the standards of rational justification
themselves emerge from and are part of a history [...].” (Ibidem: 7).
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fourth century moral disagreement. In After
Virtue Macintyre had characterized the Athenian moral disagreement as the existence of
rival conceptions of the virtues (sophrosyne,
dike...) and had construed the different conceptions that the Sophists, Plato, the tragedians
(especially Sophocles), and Aristotle had of the
virtues in general after the disruption of moral
disagreement, as different responses to the fact of
incoherence (“each informed by a different purpose”, cf. Macintyre 1984: 135). But had underlined “at least one thing that they all share.” “All
do take it for granted that the milieu in which
the virtues are to be exercised and in terms of
which they are to be defined is the polis (ibidem;
135).” However, there is another common denominator which all Greeks shared (from Homer on) as the other component, besides or along
with the polis, of the social context in which every virtue had to be defined or redefined.
We have noticed [...] that the different and rival lists of virtues, different and rival attitudes
toward the virtues and different and rival definitions of individual virtues are at home in
fifth century Athens and that nonetheless the
city-state and the agon provide the shared contexts in which the virtues are to be exercised.
(Ibidem: 138).
Now, it seems that these shared contexts
can be interpreted as representing a basic
agreement which would make it possible to
characterize Greek moral thought as a unitary
moral tradition despite the internal conflicts
arising within it and which could eventually
lead to a restoration of its endangered coherence. But Macintyre’s more detailed account
of the origins of the fifth century Athenian crisis reveals that it is precisely the coexistence of
these two different horizons for the definition
and redefinition of the virtues which under certain historical circumstances gives rise to the
conflict. Polis and agon allow for two different
and eventually conflicting sets of values. They
embody two different conceptions of the good,
or what amounts to the same, of the telos. So it
is two different conceptions of goods and ends,
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already present in the Homeric society but finally colliding in fifth century Athens, what
brings the radical moral disagreement that
took place in the Greek world. The teleological
framework of Greek ethics does not prevent its
existence, at least in the way in which the two
types of goods are related to each other in the
Greek society. Macintyre’s thesis requires then
a further qualification. It is not any arbitrary
version of the teleological framework which
allows for the suppression of fundamental disagreement. Such framework certainly allows
for a conflicting definition of ends and goods
(even a constitutionally conflictive as that one
between competitive and cooperative goods).
But it is again within such a framework that basic agreement can be restored and traditions can
either be revitalized or replaced for new ones.
Modernity seems to have drawn the wrong
conclusion out of the difficulties of Greek moral history. Modernity has dismissed altogether
any teleological framework and has thus deprived itself of the necessary means for healing its wounds. Not that wounds are or should
be once and for all avoidable (Macintyre is not
pleading for an ideal of absolute harmony),
not that new wounds won’t be inflicted. But
the teleological framework is 9to use a word in
vogue, a pharmakon: it is the poison and it is the
medicine. In its optimism and in its tendency
toward a sharp seclusion of good and evil it has
simply moved forward on the assumption that
there is (or should be) no ambivalence in the human good. This may point to the reason why
the modernity is regularly invited by its critics
to put to trial such an assumption by means of a
confrontation with tragedy.
Bibliography
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1998. Whose Justice?
Which Rationality? Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1984 (2nd ed.). After
Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press.
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