MacIntyre’s Unsuccessful Aristotelianism: An Oakeshottian Critique of After Virtue

Tyler ChamberlainCarleton University, Ottawa ON

tylerchamberlain@cmail.carleton.ca

Prepared for delivery at the 2014 Aristotle & the PeripateticTradition Conference

Dominican University College

This is a draft. Please do not cite without permission of theauthor.

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This paper will analyze Alasdair MacIntyre’s critique of

modern moral philosophy and his subsequent reintroduction of

Aristotelian virtue ethics. I argue that MacIntyre’s

articulation of Aristotelianism fails on two related fronts.

First, in his analysis of the modern political problem he remains

beholden to a distinctly modern rationalist epistemology. I’ll

show this by way of Michael Oakeshott’s work on rationalism in

politics. Second, he concedes Aristotle’s full conception of

teleology – what MacIntyre calls “metaphysical biology” – to

modern science, which constitutes a departure from the basis of

Aristotle’s thought, namely his doctrine of causality.

Aristotle’s ethics, I contend, is dependent upon his physics. In

rejecting the Aristotelian notion that the good for each thing is

determined by the type of thing it is – which is to say that

formal and final cause cannot be thought of in isolation –

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MacIntyre cannot consistently affirm Aristotle’s ethics. The

conclusion, to be offered in the form of a commentary on the

above points, is that MacIntyre’s concessions to modern

epistemology and science are indicators of a nascent modernism

that prevents him from articulating a full Aristotelianism which,

I believe, is required in order to address the problems of

modernity.

I approach MacIntyre as an extremely sympathetic critic. I

affirm with him the value of classical approaches to moral and

political thinking. However, I simply don’t think that he goes

far enough in reviving Aristotle’s ethics. That is, I agree with

where he wants to go, but as the common phrase goes, “you can’t

get there from here.”

After Virtue: Interminability and Manipulation

MacIntyre’s approach to moral and political theory can be

described as taking place in the shadow of crisis. As he sees

it, emotivism and Nietzsche’s doctrine of the will to power are

not only gaining acceptance, but actually capture the essence of

modern moral philosophy. With the spectre of Nietzsche haunting

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most moral and political debates, a return to the classics is not

only of theoretical interest, but concerns the very nature of our

social and political interaction. Again, in this MacIntyre and I

are in full agreement.

First published in 1981, After Virtue is roughly divided into

two sections. Chapters 1 through 9 present a critical argument,

in which MacIntyre attempts to demonstrate and account for the

manipulative character of contemporary moral debate, and chapters

10 through 19 present his constructive argument, in which he

defends (what he takes to be) an account of Aristotelian virtue

ethics, albeit revised to suit the modern age.

He discusses the perennial hot-button topics of just war,

distributive justice, and abortion, and points to a number of

important characteristics of such debates. First, every side’s

argument can ultimately be boiled down to a set of foundational

principles that are incommensurable with the principles of the

opposing side. This is not to say that no arguments are made,

but rather that all arguments, in the last instance, rest upon

premises for which no rational grounds can be given. In

arguments regarding war, for example, just war arguments hang on

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premises of justice, whereas realpolitik arguments hang on

premises of survival. The problem is that the language of

justice is often incommensurable with the language of survival.

In a somewhat explicit fashion1, MacIntyre borrows the

language of incommensurability from Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy of

science, the borrowing of which sheds light on his depiction.

Kuhn is concerned with “paradigms,” and the limited extent to

which rival scientific theories can relate to each other. In the

final analysis, Kuhn’s paradigm approach allows for very little

cross-paradigm communication, due to the radically different

language and presuppositions inherent in each paradigm. Speech

is therefore merely flung at, or past, rather than directly

spoken to, one’s academic counterpart. Much of the same is at

work, MacIntyre seems to imply, in our contemporary public

debates. Each side is presenting what appear to be arguments,

but are simply private preferences for one incommensurable

premise over another, presumably equally plausible, premise.

1 MacIntyre admits to borrowing the term ‘conceptual incommensurability’ from “the philosophy of science,” but stops short of naming names. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd Edition (Notre Dame: University ofNotre Dame Press, 1984), 8.

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Because no further rational grounds can be provided for such

premises, they must ultimately be the result of choice or

personal preference.2 Since the preference for rights over

utility, or equality over freedom, is not the product of rational

deliberation, it must be, MacIntyre maintains, mere choice. This

has the unsettling consequence that in our moral discourse all we

are really doing is attempting to get others to do what we want,

not necessarily that which is truly

just, fair, or equitable.

MacIntyre’s example of the Rawls-Nozick debate is

illustrative. Rawls’ famous two principles of justice take as

their foundation equality with respect to needs, whereas Nozick’s

theory of just acquisition and transfer is based on entitlements.

Not only do need and entitlement belong in quite different

categories, but the argument given in favour of Rawlsian need

does not undermine or even speak to Nozick’s principle of

entitlement. The fact that rational agents would agree to the

equality and difference principles leaves the notion of just

2 This is perhaps where MacIntyre departs most strongly from Kuhn, i.e, his inference of irrationality from the fact of incommensurability. Thomas Kuhn strenuously denied that relativism or irrationalism followed from the existence of rival paradigms, but MacIntyre seems to accept that implication.

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entitlement unscathed, and the reverse is true as well. Rawls’

foundational premise, in other words, is conceptually

incommensurable with Nozick’s. Each author, MacIntyre maintains,

simply begs the question in favour of his own preferred

principle, and derives the entirety of his political theory from

it. As argued earlier, this effectively reduces debates

regarding economic justice to private preference: if somebody

happens to think that needs are more fundamental, then they will

likely accept Rawls’ theory of justice, but if they prefer

entitlements, they will follow Nozick.

If MacIntyre’s diagnosis is correct, and moral concepts are

no longer rationally authoritative, then contemporary social

relations are constituted by relations of manipulation, rather

than persuasion. Our allegedly rational method of settling

differences by argument is revealed to be a process of “pure

assertion and counter-assertion,”3 in which the most eloquent or

powerful party prevails. In other words, Nietzsche’s critique of

modernity would then be correct, unless our moral language can be

made intelligible again.

3 MacIntyre, 8.

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It is in this context that the work of Michael Oakeshott can

act as a foil to MacIntyre’s project. Speaking of what he called

ideologies – namely, special political vocabularies that give

preference to certain principles over others4 – Oakeshott writes

that “[t]here is, at least, nothing to forbid commerce between

them,” and “[f]ew of them are incapable of change; it is often

possible to translate the terms of one into the terms of the

other.”5 With these words, Oakeshott directly challenges

MacIntyre’s interpretation of contemporary political discourse.

Their disagreement regarding the alleged incommensurability of

debate is ultimately the result of their distinct epistemologies,

and specifically the role – or lack thereof – given to non-

rational forms of knowledge. MacIntyre, I want to suggest,

presupposes something resembling enlightenment rationalism in his

diagnosis of modern political discourse. I’ll demonstrate this

by discussing Oakeshott’s articulation and critique of modern

rationalism.

4 In Oakeshottian terms, Rawls and Nozick would represent competing ideologies, or vocabularies.5 Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and other essays, New and Expanded Edition (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund Inc., 1991), 76.

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Michael Oakeshott on Rationalism and Practical Knowledge

His essay entitled “Rationalism in Politics,” presents the

epistemology that frames his politics. There are two types of

knowledge, he claims: practical and technical. Technical

knowledge is that which can be communicated as a set of rules in

a book, whereas practical knowledge is not explicitly formulable.

Oakeshott often uses the example of cooking to demonstrate this

distinction. Mastery of the steps of a particular recipe is not

the same thing as the ability to cook, experiment ad hoc with new

flavour combinations, or develop entirely new recipes. These

skills, he claims, cannot be taught as a set of rules, but must

be learned via practice and discipleship. The work of the

natural scientist is also best understood in this manner. The

knowledge that must go into formulating a testable hypothesis is

something the scientist gains through socialization rather than

explicit teaching. There is a profound theoretical point beyond

these trite illustrations, namely that the rules of logic and

rational demonstration, as written in logic textbooks, do not

constitute the whole of knowledge, as rationalism supposes, but

rather are inseparable from intuition and practice.

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What Oakeshott here calls rationalism consists of a

separation between practical and technical knowledge, and a

banishment of the former from the realm of knowledge into the

realm of mere opinion at best, or prejudice at worst. The

“sovereignty of technique,” as he calls it, is adopted out of a

desire for certainty in all matters. Personal and cultural

experience varies, and is therefore not a guarantor of certainty,

and the same can be said for the incommunicable know-how that

makes up the various forms of practical and intuitive knowledge.

Being capable of expression only in practice and not in speech,

practical knowledge has “the appearance of imprecision and

consequently of uncertainty, of being a matter of opinion, of

probability rather than truth.”6 Certainty can only be secured,

the rationalist therefore believes, by relying solely on proper

rules and methods of analysis, whether applied to art, religion,

politics, or even to thinking itself. Any activity can then be

carried out simply by following the rules, and prior experience

is unnecessary.

6 Oakeshott, 15.

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Two final points about rationalism are worth noting. First,

it must be stressed that the precise nature of the rules is not

the most relevant aspect, but rather the fact that impersonal

rules of technique alone can account for the entirety of

knowledge. Rationalism does not simply claim to offer a new

method, but claims that simply following the right method itself

will produce certainty. Second, the sovereignty of technique

entails a complete divorce between pre- and post-methodical

knowledge. Prior experience, opinions, and practice are treated

as something to be overcome, rather than simply expanded upon or

clarified. This purge of prephilosophical knowledge is best

exemplified by Descartes’ methodical doubt of all pre-existing

opinion.

So, what Oakeshott calls political rationalism is this: the

false belief that traditional or practical knowledge can be

rejected in favour of a purely technical knowledge of politics

that can be entirely communicated in a book and takes the form of

an ideology. His critique of this notion is not necessarily that

it can be destructive to political life, but that it is in

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principle impossible to achieve, since traditional and practical

knowledge can never be completely abandoned.

This analysis of Oakeshott’s epistemology provides some

context – and content – to his earlier claim that, contra

MacIntyre, rival political vocabularies and ideologies are not

incommensurable. His essay entitled “Political Discourse” makes

a distinction between two types of political speech,

differentiated by their logical form. Demonstrative discourse is

rationalist, and attempts to ground its pronouncements in either

logical or social scientific certainty, whereas ordinary discourse

deals in probabilities and socially admitted goods rather than

moral axioms. The parallels between demonstrative discourse and

political rationalism are clear and intentional. The conceptual

difficulties that plague political rationalism show up in

demonstrative discourse as well. The desire for certainty behind

demonstrative discourse – the very same desire behind political

rationalism – makes us unsatisfied with proposals that do not

promise the same certainty. In other words, once confronted with

the promise of a purely rational form of settling moral and

political debate, any disagreement that is not similarly rational

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is liable to be written off as irrational or mere private

preference. In the final paragraph of “Political Discourse”

Oakeshott writes these words:

[T]his craving for demonstrative political argument may make us discontented with ordinary political discourse which, because it is not demonstrative, we may be tempted to regard as a species of unreason. This would be a disastrous error. It is an error, because discourse which deals in conjectures and possibilities and the weighing of circumstantial pros andcons is reasoning, and it is the only sort of reasoning appropriate to practical affairs.7

The conjectures and circumstantial pros and cons with which

ordinary discourse deals are precisely those tenets of practical

knowledge which, being inarticulable, cannot be given logical

form but nonetheless comprise actual knowledge that is not

reducible to will or preference.

MacIntyre’s Political Rationalism

So if Oakeshott’s unwillingness to reduce political

disagreement to private preference can be traced to his

reconciliation of technical and practical knowledge, one would

expect MacIntyre’s contrary diagnosis to result from the

rationalist exclusion of practical knowledge. Indeed, such an

7 Oakeshott, 95.

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exclusion is evident throughout his writing. An assumption

underlying every discussion of moral debate is that if the

reasons for holding a given belief are not explicitly formulable,

then the belief itself has no cognitive basis. Anything not

based on technical knowledge, MacIntyre seems to assume, is

merely a product of personal preference and subjective will.

This is to say that despite his cogent analysis and critique of

the enlightenment project, he seems to assume a modern

rationalist epistemology. This is especially clear in the

following passage:

Yet if we possess no unassailable criteria, no set of compelling reasons by which we may convince our opponents, it follows that in the process of making up our own minds we canhave made no appeal to such criteria or such reasons. If I lack any good reasons to invoke against you, it must seem that I lack any good reasons. Hence it seems that underlyingmy own position there must be some non-rational decision to adopt that position.8

This very clearly sets up a false dichotomy between the

communicable and the non-rational: what is not communicable can

only arise from the will rather than the mind. Gone from

MacIntyre is the notion of practical knowledge, that is,

everything we know but cannot communicate in its entirety.

8 MacIntyre, 8.

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Because Rawls and Nozick’s foundational premises resist

propositionalisation, for example, they cannot make a claim to

knowledge, and can only be accounted for in terms of preference.

MacIntyre here seems to have committed the error that Oakeshott

warns against, namely confusing anything other than demonstrative

discourse with “a species of unreason.”9 Put simply he commits

the fallacy of the excluded middle, by reducing all propositions

into one of two categories, namely completely articulable or deriving

from irrational preference, and ignores the possibility that there

might be statements that fit into neither of those categories,

being neither explicitly rational or irrational but belonging to

a third category of practical knowledge. He assumes that

anything not capable of explicit rational formulation has no

epistemic value, and must be the result of will or irrational

preferences, whereas Oakeshott divides knowledge into two

components, technical and practical, with practical knowledge

being resistant to propositionalising. The implication of

Oakeshott’s epistemology is that even if rival political

9 Oakeshott, 95.

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positions are unable to be put into rational-technical form, they

may still be based in real knowledge, not irrational will.

Thus if Oakeshott is correct in characterizing modern

rationalism by its separation of technical and practical

knowledge, as I believe he is, then MacIntyre is caught in the

awkward position of attempting to overcome the enlightenment

while remaining beholden to the enlightenment’s paradigm of

knowledge.

MacIntyre’s Social Teleology

MacIntyre’s second important departure from Aristotle

involves replacing what he calls Aristotle’s “metaphysical

biology” with a non-metaphysical foundation for teleology, in

particular a quasi-sociological account of human lives as taking

place within an inter-subjective narrative. After giving his

interpretation of Aristotle’s account of the virtues, MacIntyre

poses the following question, which guides the remainder of the

book: “if we reject [Aristotle’s metaphysical biology], as we

must, is there any way in which that teleology can be preserved?

(162)”. He continues: “any adequate generally Aristotelian

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account must supply a teleological account which can replace

Aristotle’s metaphysical biology” (163).

MacIntyre doesn’t say why we must reject Aristotle’s belief

that the good for man is contingent upon his physio-biological

make-up – evidently it is so obvious that he need not give his

reasons. However, given his capitulation to modern rationalism,

combined with the fact that this rationalism goes hand in hand

with the modern ideal of value-free empirical science, it is not

surprising that MacIntyre the rationalist is uncomfortable with

the prospect of deriving the content of the virtues from the

physical sciences.

MacIntyre replaces the biological conditions of human life

with the social conditions of human life as the basis for

teleology. The virtues, for MacIntyre, are no longer those

behaviors and dispositions that naturally contribute to the

flourishing of humans qua members of the biological species homo

sapiens; instead, they are defined against the backdrop of social

existence. MacIntyre offers the following preliminary core

definition of virtue: “it always requires for its application the

acceptance [of] some prior account of certain features of social

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and moral life in terms of which it has to be defined and

explained” (186). He goes on to clarify:

I am going to suggest that this notion of a particular type of practice as providing the arena in which the virtues are exhibited and in terms of which they are to receive their primary, if incomplete, definition is crucial to the whole enterprise of identifying a core concept of the virtues (187).

The arena in which the virtues are exhibited and against

which they are defined has three components: practices, human

lives as being unified narratives, and tradition. By a

“practice” MacIntyre means a “socially established cooperative

human activity” through which the internal goods proper to that

activity are attained by excelling at that very activity and are

definitive of the activity itself. So for example, while reading

Aristotle is not a practice, participating in academia is – as a

socially established human activity with internal goods, and

behaviors and dispositions that are more or less conducive to the

attaining of those internal goods.

At the most basic level, virtues are, in MacIntyre’s words,

“the acquired human qualities the possession and exercise of

which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are

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internal to practices and the lack of which effectively prevents

us from achieving any such goods” (191). However, this leaves us

with the arbitrary choice between competing practices – surely

the proficient sex trafficker is not equally virtuous as the

excellent kindergarten teacher. MacIntyre deals with this by

locating individual practices within the narrative unity of a

whole human life. Each human life, that is, is a narrative

whole, with a beginning, end, and journey from one to the other.

This unity gives a sense of purpose – i.e. telos – to everything

one does. One can only make sense of one’s life, and therefore

answer the question, “What am I to do?” by taking note of the

role one has been born into, and the possible futures, goals, or

endings entailed thereby. This gives a non-arbitrary criterion

for deciding between rival practices in which to engage.

Finally, arbitrariness is ultimately overcome by placing

one’s individual narrative life into the interlocking network of

narrative lives of those around us. The inter-subjectivity of

social life means that who I see myself to be and the

possibilities and limitations incumbent upon me are not my own

doing, and therefore the unity of purpose that characterizes my

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life and partially dictates which practices I must engage in and

therefore which virtues I should cultivate, has almost nothing to

do with my choices or preferences. We are all born and

socialized into a tradition, the shared histories and

expectations of which frame the purposes our lives take on. That

is, the virtues are contingent upon, and defined by, the social

fact of the inter-subjectivity of human lives as narrative

wholes. What is good for me is part of a complex network that

transcends me, and is not simply arbitrary.

Finally, the move from “the good for this particular man” to

“the good for man as such” involves isolating what is commonly

good to all individual men. The good for man, then, on

MacIntyre’s view, is relatively devoid of content: “the life

spent seeking for the good life for man” (219).

The Inseparability of Formal and Final Cause

The reason why abandoning a biological foundation for

teleology, as MacIntyre does, is fundamentally un-Aristotelian is

clear once we consider Aristotle’s doctrine of causality, and how

it connects formal and final cause. The doctrine of causality is

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the foundation of Aristotelianism. Note, for example, the

opening statements of his Politics10 and Nichomachean Ethics,11 which

frame their respective investigations in the context of

causality, and especially final cause.

The clearest discussion of causality is given in book 2 of

the Physics, in which Aristotle expounds his famous doctrine of

the four causes. According to what came to be known as

hylomorphism, each thing is composed of matter and form. The

question of the causes, then, is “Why does this particular thing

consist of this particular matter and this particular form?” In

his Physics among other places, Aristotle argues that the various

answers to this question can be grouped into four categories:

1. Material Cause.2. Formal Cause.3. Efficient Cause.4. Final Cause.

In the 7th chapter of book 2, Aristotle writes that in the

case of natural change the formal, final, and efficient cause are

10 “Since we see that every city is some sort of partnership, and that every partnership is constituted for the sake of some good, it is clear that all partnerships aim at some good, and that the partnership that is most authoritative of all and embraces all the others does so particularly, and aims at the most authoritative good of all. This is what is called the city or the political partnership” (1252a).11 “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action as well as choice,is held to aim at some good” (1049a).

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the same, such that the form is both the purpose of the change and

the mover (198a) – that is, formal, final, and efficient cause

are the same. By this he means that the form itself, being

motionless, is the initiator of the change from potency to

actuality. Because the movement is caused by the form itself,

the form acts as the end, or purpose.

The relevant aspect of Aristotle’s doctrine of causality can

be summed up, then, in the following manner: final cause, as the

end for which all change occurs, acts as the efficient cause of

change. The form into which the underlying thing changes is the

end of the change, and the change is a product of the inherent

striving of the potency of the material. To simplify as much as

this complex relationship permits, we can say that the purpose of

the change is responsible for the character of the change as well

as its occurrence. Final cause is thus architectonic among the

causes, in that it brings all of them together in such a way as

to produce the object brought about, whether natural or

artificial.

The point of this convoluted digression is that final cause,

purpose, or in human terms, the good for man, cannot be

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understood in isolation from formal cause – or, in human terms,

what it is to be a man. Virtue, i.e. the habits and dispositions

that contribute to human flourishing in the political community,

are necessarily defined by the type of being a human being is.

To define them in terms of outward, i.e. social, conditions, is a

fundamental break from Aristotelian causality, within which

virtue must be located in order to remain intelligible.

That is, MacIntyre’s articulation of virtue sunders final cause –

the good for man – from formal cause – who man biologically is –

such that he is no longer working within an Aristotelian

framework. While Aristotle would certainly agree that human

beings require community in order to live virtuous lives, that

stems from their biological and physical abilities and

limitations and is not itself what defines the virtues.

Finally, it is fitting to note that MacIntyre’s

understanding of tradition, which is the social basis for his

teleology, is infected with the same rationalism as his earlier

deconstruction of modern political discourse. Again, a brief

comparison with Oakeshott will make this clear.

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Two Rival Versions of Tradition

Each thinker provides a detailed account of the concept of

tradition, and attempts to explain its relationship to thought

and action; tradition occupies the role of conceptually relating

their epistemologies to their interpretations of political

discourse. For this reason, their rival theories of knowledge

and politics can be brought into clear focus by analysing what

each says about the nature and role of tradition. MacIntyre

writes that “[a] living tradition then is an historically

extended, socially embodied argument, and an argument precisely

in part about the goods which constitute that tradition.”12 The

central place given to argument in MacIntyrean traditions

justifies one commentator in describing them as “conceptual

schemes...extended through time and history.”13 That is to say,

a tradition is simply a set of similar and related beliefs held

by successive generations. The Marxist tradition consists of the

entirety of thought arising out of a meditation on Marx’s

writings, and the Aristotelian tradition consists of the thoughts

influenced by Aristotle’s writings.

12 MacIntyre, 222.13 Lutz, 7.

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Without reading too much into MacIntyre’s apparent Kuhnian

influence, it may perhaps be fair to draw a parallel between

Kuhn’s concept of a paradigm and MacIntyre’s concept of a

tradition. What each has in common is that while they can

influence thought from within, they can also be entirely

overthrown and left behind. Conceptual change only comes about

when Kuhn’s scientists or MacIntyre’s philosophers consciously

decide to abandon one paradigm, or tradition, in favour of

another. Indeed, central to MacIntyre’s account of the history

of western moral philosophy is that the classical and

Aristotelian traditions were left behind in large part, if not

solely, because of the desire of enlightenment thinkers to free

themselves from any external sources of control. It is also

important to note MacIntyre’s qualification of traditions as

being either living or dead. A dead tradition, he argues, is one

in which the cognitive claims are not rationally accepted, and

therefore stand in need of either re-articulation or abandonment.

The Burkean conception of a tradition, he notes, pertains to dead

traditions precisely by virtue of the fact that they are not

rationally articulated.

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In Oakeshottian terms, MacIntyre’s traditions are mere

collections of similar technical knowledge claims that must be

defended or rejected on purely technical-rational grounds. Any

tradition of thought, in other words, insofar as it is thought

and not preference, exists solely in the realm of rational

knowledge, and consists of agreement therein. Moreover, because

this notion of tradition lacks an account of practical knowledge,

it has no significant power to influence or shape future thought

and action. Without such an account, there is no way to make

intelligible the transmission of the beliefs constituting the

tradition without relying solely on the methods of technical

knowledge.

Oakeshott’s notion of tradition, on the other hand, is

notably deeper. In short, tradition refers to the inescapability

of inherited modes of practical thought and life. Capital “T”

Tradition, in this sense, pertains to practical knowledge, and

the fact that it is passed on regardless of changes in the sphere

of technical knowledge. It thus has a self-perpetuating

character due to the role of socialization and the fact that

human knowing is largely non-rational and practical. Oakeshott

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is therefore one of the “conservative political theorists”

against whom MacIntyre directs his critique of Burkean

traditions, and his response can be stated thusly: the assumption

that traditions, as such, can die at all is misguided, and

represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of

traditions. For Oakeshott, tradition does not merely refer to

sets of beliefs, but rather to the mode in which human beings

necessarily acquire social knowledge and practices.

When seen in light of their epistemological groundings, the

contrast between Oakeshott and MacIntyre’s conception of

tradition becomes clear. It is because MacIntyre thinks

traditions can be rejected and left behind like paradigms, that

he feels the need to rationally re-articulate the Aristotelian

tradition.

Conclusion

MacIntyre’s project is to enact a partial return to

Aristotelianism, in response to what he sees as the nihilistic

results of the modern project. He goes part of the way in

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advancing beyond modern rationalism, but, as Oakeshott’s work

reveals, he still retains a nascent modernism in his insistence

that if a given belief cannot be rationally articulated then it

cannot claim the status of knowledge. To put it in Oakeshott’s

terms, MacIntyre can only interpret political debate through the

lens of demonstrative discourse, and sees that what appear to be

moral axioms are merely the admitted goods of the arguing

subjects. To the political rationalist, who requires axioms and

logical certainty, this is unacceptable.

MacIntyre’s modernism does not end there, however. What I

have suggested is his concession to modern value-free science of

the claim that virtues can be derived from biology leads his

teleological conception of ethics in an un-Aristotelian

direction. Deriving the virtues from the external conditions of

social existence rather than the internal nature of man as such

forces him to abandon Aristotle’s formulation of the doctrine of

causality, which I take to be fundamental to Aristotelianism as a

whole.

Finally, and to come full-circle, MacIntyre’s notion of a

tradition, which acts as the culmination of his social basis for

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the virtues, reflects his modern rationalist rejection of

practical knowledge.

While After Virtue is 35 years old, and MacIntyre himself has

responded to many objections like the ones I’ve made here – and

even amended his thinking in important ways in later works – it

is still worth noting the difficulty he has in overcoming modern

philosophy. Despite his astute analysis of contemporary

political discourse, insightful exegesis of the history of modern

philosophy, and his ardent desire to restore a classical approach

to the moral life, he seemingly accepted as obvious the claims of

enlightenment rationalism and value-free modern science. His

inability to fully separate himself from an underlying modernism

significantly weakened his ability to articulate a full

Aristotelian response to modernity. To do so here is beyond my

time or purpose, but a thoroughgoing Aristotelianism would have

to begin by challenging many of the assumptions that MacIntyre

took for granted, including but not limited to the role of non-

rational knowledge and the way in which physics and biology are

inherently normative endeavors, without which the virtues cannot

be understood.

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Bibliography

Lutz, Christopher Stephen. Reading Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2012).

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MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd Edition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984).

Oakeshott, Michael. Rationalism in Politics and other essays, New and Expanded Edition (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund Inc., 1991).