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Title: After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition
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Manufacturer: University of Notre Dame Press
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| After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition by University of Notre Dame Press Cut out the Marxist Thought and this would be a Masterpiece | Chapter five - Why the Enlightenment Project Failed - is the best, most persuasive chapter I have read in modern philosophy. The build up to this chapter and the content of the chapter, in itself, make the work a very rewarding read. The argument in Chapter Five is unassailable to both historical and rational argument.
After Chapter Five, however, I feel MacIntrye lost his compass and wandered Quixotically trying to substantiate Marxism and its founders against the evils of Western Capitalist thought.
The most troubling point of all this, which MacIntyre of all people should have known, is when he crossed his own rule (about the necessity of moral philosophy being argued testing both its internal logical consistency and its historical effectiveness) to try and justify his Marxist philosophy. He obdurately defends Marxism in the face of all the evil it has produced throughout history (without producing good fruit similar to Christianity that has also had its time of dark age) by saying its application has never been purely applied and therefore he feels he can throw out all the historical facts that could be used to invalidate its claims. If MacIntyre really believes this Marxist defence holds, then the philosophies of the Enlightenment have been given a similar position to retreat.
I do not think this argument holds and therefore I loved half the book (so much so that I will give it a four as a whole).
| | After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition by University of Notre Dame Press Nietzsche or Aristotle? the question is the same 20 years later. | I am rather flabbergasted that the only review on this page thus far is one comparing Alisdair MacIntyre to radical islamists. That is rather disconcerting as the author's roots, as others have already noted, come from the 1960-70's British Labour movement and from a very deep, very thought-out Marxism in the context Marxism demands to be judged on, namely, not only as a socio-economic theory, but as a robust and encompassing worldview. When MacIntyre finally decided to officially leave the Communist party, he noticed that his moral critique of Marxism seemed to lack any force, as the only two seemingly possible moral outlooks were that of a rather brass individualism ( an odd modern mixture of Kantian and Sartrean thought where each person chooses the moral law for himself ) and the tradition he was leaving, i.e. Marxism, which seemed incapable of serious self-critique. (SeeThe Macintyre Reader). The shrillness of his own protest sent him on a philosophical journey which he continues to go on to this day but we are lucky enough to have collection of his thoughts along the way. After Virtue was a tour de force when it hit the shelves roughly 20 years ago. It laid bare the utter incoherence of the use of moral language in societies of "advanced modernity", i.e., modern Europe, the former USSR, and the US. His critique of the various descendents of the Enlightenment, from utilitarians and Nietzscheans, blasted moral philosophy out of its slumber into a field that continues to grow to this day. Even today, most moral philosophers have spent most of their time attacking Macintyre's positive theses rather than critiquing his critique (a definite sign of the respect at his assessment of the use of modern moral language). To summarize it here would definitely deprive the would-be reader of the insightful journey that MacIntyre brings the reader on as he tries to look at the state of modern society. However, I will summarize the major motivations on why this book was written and why someone would read it:
1) Why are there so many types of moral disagreements in modern societies?
2) Why do these disagreements never seem to end but go on indefinitely?
3) Can any moral theory be related to actual facts or is all moral language sui generis?
Not surprisingly, MacIntyre traces most of these problems to those thinkers of the Enlightenment yet it would be a MISTAKE (as the first reviewer makes) in thinking that MacIntyre is somehow laying the blame solely on the Enlightenment for the current situation. Rather, his whole thesis is that they did the best they could in defending in what they thought was the CONTENT of morality (the culture of post-Enlightenment Europe being as it were a mix of
Christian values with an intense admiration of newly re-discovered Greco-Roman pagan texts on a range of subjects) with their own philosophical methods (See Hume's reasoning on why women should remain chaste until marriage). MacIntyre's insight is that they HAD to fail. No philosophical brilliance they could muster could save the CONTENT they wished to save (for example,"always tell your mother the truth") with their prescribed METHODS of doing philosophy (for example a la Kant, "all moral laws have the character of being assented to by all rational persons at all times in all cultures"). The Enlightenment thinkers chose an impossible task and thus failed (and moreover had to fail in such a way that their failure was relatively hidden from the thinkers themselves and their respective cultures at large). It is only with Nietzche do we have a thinker brave enough to raze the CONTENT they wished to save with the METHODS and start totally anew.
Thus, half-way through the book, MacIntyre offers the reader a stark choice: either we must choose that all moral talk (talk of right & wrong) is really an attempt to impose one's will on another person a la Nietzsche or that there is form of moral language that is not undercut by Nietzsche's own rather devastating attack on (post-)Enlightenment moral theories.
Hence begins MacIntyre's foray from critique to laying out a positive philosophical programme that leads to several books (See Whose Justice? Which Rationality? & Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Paul Carus Lectures) especially) and a refining of his ideas.
Does Nietzsche win?
That is for the reader to decide. MacIntyre has been steadily producing a body of work that tries to show that Nietzsche does not win (it starts as a whisper in this book and finally gets turned into a shout in later works). However, like all philosophy, his attempt is an argument, and it is up to the reader to decide if it is a good one.
5 stars, hands down. I really hope you decide to buy(or check-out) this important work which deserves to taken seriously for years to come. ( 20 and counting!) | | After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition by University of Notre Dame Press The Enlightenment as perceived by a typical reactionary | In this Third Edition, MacIntyre remains "committed to the thesis that it is only from the standpoint of a very different tradition, one whose beliefs and presuppositions were articulated in their classical form by Aristotle, that we can understand both the genesis and the predicament of moral modernity."
This book is a sophistical attack on the alleged fruits of the historical epoc known as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment: A Brief History with Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture) MacIntyre claims that the Enlightenment deprived European Civilization of "a rational basis for moral analysis." He pretends to find such a basis in what he calls "Classical Civilization."
Most people would agree that the qualtities of the Enlightenment provide the essential characteristics of Western Civilization, as that civilization is defined by Samuel P. Huntington The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. MacIntyre's view of the Enlightenment is not so different from the view of the founder of the Muslem Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb. Qutb hates Western Civilization. But, Qutb has no problem with Aristotle. Basic Principles of Islamic Worldview Remember, Aristotle was reintroduced to Europe by the Moslem scholar Ibn Rushd (Averroes: His Life, Work). His works had been treasured by Moslem scholars for centuries after having been discarded by Europe.
Europe, as can easily be seen by reference to Ceasar's "Gallic Wars" and his description of Vercingetorix and early Europeans, was different from Classical Civilization. The Gallic War (Loeb Classical Library) Europe took a different route.
Classic Civilization fled to Constantinople and was overwhelmed by the Ottomans in the course of becoming modern day Istanbul. The Emperor Romanus Lecapenus and his Reign: A Study of Tenth-Century Byzantium (Cambridge Paperback Library) When Europe rediscovered Classical Civilization, it provided an inspiration for thinking outside the box of the Dark Ages.
The works of the Classic Civilization were stimulating to a people locked within narrow Scholasticism of the Roman Church. The stimulation of a different point of view provoked Europeans to rethink the communitarian spirit of the Dark Ages and define for themselves a new reality based upon individualism and science. In doing so, they transcended both the Dark Ages and Classic Civilization. It was a synthesis that has been enormously productive up to the modern age.
Aristotle was not writing about individual freedom. He was writing about civic virtues. The primary civic virtue was participation in the affairs of state. Aristotle had no concept of individualism. In Aristotle's day, everyone existed to serve the city-state. By the same token, for Qutb (and sadly, MacIntyre), the individual only exists to serve the theocracy.
This book certainly represents a showcase of skills in the arts of rhetoric, philosophy, and ethical analysis. But, it is hardly of any use to modern man in trying to sort through the competing demands and opportunities of individual freedom. If we are willing to give up individualism in exchange for civic virtue as defined by the ancients, not only would we be living in a society much like an Islamic State ruled by Sharia Law, but we would be barring our children from a future in which mankind is able to survive by using the tools of science.
Our challenges are enormous. While "Civic Virtue" sounds like a concept on which no one could disagree, it is only found in its original form in a communitarian (or even totalitarian) environment. Plato's Republic, for example, was a totalitarian society. The Republic (Penguin Classics) If such a society were capable of solving basic problems like polution, then surely the U.S.S.R. might have avoided the wholesale destruction of it's own environment.
Our United States Constitution is the pre-eminent fruit of the Enlightenment. Only the scientific method, powered by the energy of the individual freedoms propounded in our wonderful Constitution can marshal the creativity necessary to work our way out of nature's trap. Otherwise, like a colony of bacteria in a petri dish, the human race will simply consume all its resources and die out.
The communitarians have nothing to offer us, other than the hope of being transported to a heaven located some where above the concentric crystaline spheres surrounding a world as it was thought to exist prior to Galileo. To this very day, Galileo has had no impact on their understanding of mankind's relationship to God. For Qtub and MacIntyre, it is still as if the "firmament" of concentric crystalline spheres holding the "lesser light to rule the night" were really up there, and as if a normal human body carried up into the clouds wouldn't need oxygen tanks to survive the lack of air.
Galileo was the prototype for the modern individual. He was persecuted by the communitarians. He lacked MacIntyre's civic virtue. He thought for himself. He started the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment. NOVA - Galileo's Battle for the Heavens
The communitarians, for thousands of years, had watched the moon go through its phases and never once realized that it was a sphere orbiting the earth, both of which were illuminated by a distant light. Brainwashing from birth, the power of prejudice and the shamanism of the religious leaders was so difficult to surmount that even Galileo had to observe moons orbiting Jupiter before he realized God's truth about our solar system. It was a truth that was not revealed in any of the communitarian "Holy Scriptures."
Until the rise of the individual as exemplified in the Enlightenment, it never occurred to anyone to wonder why writing supposedly authored by God did not include a simple explanation of [...] the relationship between the Moon, Earth and Sun - a truth that could easily have been understood by any keen and unbiased observer by mere observation of the phases of the Moon.
If God were actually the author of these "inerrant" scriptures, He would surely have wanted us to share His pride in the simple grandeur of His solar system. Perhaps there were those who understood God's message in the phases of the Moon, but in every age they were surpressed and persecuted for their individualism. Imagine living in a world where the truth of God must be suppressed for the sake of the prejudices of the community.
The Dark Ages of Europe were terrible. Death by plagues and warlords were the norm. Life was nasty, brutish, and short. Think of the difference the Enlightenment made. Without the ability to think "outside the box" for example, would society have adopted a means to end recurring small pox epidemics? What a terrible world it would be today but for the Enlightenment.
So, MacIntyre has written a superb example of rhetoric, but it is only the highest example of the rhetoric of reaction described by Albert O. Hirschman in his groundbreaking work: "The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy." The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy Anyone who is required to read MacIntyre for school would do himself a favor by reading Hirschman in advance. By doing so, one would avoid being seduced by the siren song of communitarian conformity. By reading Hirschman in advance, one would recognize that, for all his erudition and scholastic ability, MacIntyre is only following well established patterns in reactionary thought.
Just like Sayyid Qutb, [...] Bin Laden, the followers of Wahhabism, or even Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, MacIntyre despises our Western Civilization because of the disorder caused by our freedom to think outside the communitarian box. We can't return to the age of Saladin, the Knights Templar, or the Greek Hoplite Warrior. We wouldn't want to even if we could. For 99% of mankind in those days, life was nasty, brutish, and short.
Most American reactionaries are working day and night to return America to the world of the 1890's. It is astonishing to find one who is obsessed with returning the world to the 14th century. But, it seems to be the fashion among Holy Warriors these days.
Because this book is such an extraordinary example of the art of rhetoric, I give it four stars. For it's ability to contribute anything meaningful to the solutions of the problems of our age, it would be worthy of only one star.
| | After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition by University of Notre Dame Press Book Description | | "After Virtue is a striking work. It is clearly written and readable. The nonprofessional will find MacIntyre perspicuous and lively. He stands within the best modern traditions of writing on such matters." --New York Review of Books "MacIntyre's arguments deserve to be taken seriously by anybody who thinks that the mere acceptance of pluralism is not the same thing as democracy, who worries about politicians wishing to give opinions about everything under the sun, and who stops to think of how important Aristotelian ethics have been for centuries." --The Economist When After Virtue first appeared in 1981, it was recognized as a significant and potentially controversial critique of contemporary moral philosophy. Newsweek called it "a stunning new study of ethics by one of the foremost moral philosophers in the English-speaking world." Now, twenty-five years later, the University of Notre Dame Press is pleased to release the third edition of After Virtue, which includes a new prologue "After Virtue after a Quarter of a Century." In this classic work, Alasdair MacIntyre examines the historical and conceptual roots of the idea of virtue, diagnoses the reasons for its absence in personal and public life, and offers a tentative proposal for its recovery. While the individual chapters are wide-ranging, once pieced together they comprise a penetrating and focused argument about the price of modernity. In the Third Edition prologue, MacIntyre revisits the central theses of the book and concludes that although he has learned a great deal and has supplemented and refined his theses and arguments in other works, he has "as yet found no reason for abandoning the major contentions" of this book. He remains "committed to the thesis that it is only from the standpoint of a very different tradition, one whose beliefs and presuppositions were articulated in their classical form by Aristotle, that we can understand both the genesis and the predicament of moral modernity." |
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