An Innovative Learning Centre within a Faculty of Education provides the forum to study and give lived expression to the rhythmic workings of experience through documenting a Maker Movement Day for practicing educators. Dewey’s commitment to “the idea that there is an intimate and necessary relation between the processes of actual experience and education” is at the heart of our Maker Day.1 The contemporary Maker Movement’s emphasis on studio-based learning attends to the experiences of meaning making from within the experiences (...) themselves.2 The rootedness of this thinking across time and traditions can be traced to many interested in revealing the experiential terrain.. (shrink)

Embodiment as a compelling way to rethink the nature of teaching and learning asks participants to see fundamentally what is at stake within teaching/learning situations, encountering ourselves and our relations to others/otherness. Drawing predominantly on the thinking of John Dewey and Maurice Merleau-Ponty the body's role within teaching and learning is enfleshed through the concrete experiences of one middle-school science teacher attempting to teach for greater student inquiry. Personal, embodied understandings of the lived terms of inquiry enable the science teacher (...) to seek out the lived terms of inquiry in her classroom alongside students. Theories are taken up as working notions for the teacher to examine as philosophical/theoretical/pragmatic processes to be worked with, and concomitantly, working as dynamic practice at the core of the teacher's thinking and experiences. The theory/practice conjuncture of inquiry is thus enfleshed, gaining embodied understandings. Embodiment as the medium enhancing comprehension is evidenced as holding worthy implications for teacher education. Teacher education must fall into trust with the body's role in teaching and learning. (shrink)

Embodiment as a compelling way to rethink the nature of teaching and learning asks participants to see fundamentally what is at stake within teaching/learning situations, encountering ourselves and our relations to others/otherness. Drawing predominantly on the thinking of John Dewey and Maurice Merleau‐Ponty the body's role within teaching and learning is enfleshed through the concrete experiences of one middle‐school science teacher attempting to teach for greater student inquiry. Personal, embodied understandings of the lived terms of inquiry enable the science teacher (...) to seek out the lived terms of inquiry in her classroom alongside students. Theories are taken up as working notions for the teacher to examine as philosophical/theoretical/pragmatic processes to be worked with, and concomitantly, working as dynamic practice at the core of the teacher's thinking and experiences. The theory/practice conjuncture of inquiry is thus enfleshed, gaining embodied understandings. Embodiment as the medium enhancing comprehension is evidenced as holding worthy implications for teacher education. Teacher education must fall into trust with the body's role in teaching and learning. (shrink)

One of us is a teacher educator (Margaret) and the other is a prospective teacher (Andrew). In our experiences within these roles, we increasingly see and hear little educative concern for the epistemological question "What counts as knowledge?" alongside the ontological question "What does it mean to be a teacher in classrooms?" Instead of grappling with these questions, curricular enactment in many classrooms proceeds through tightly controlled conditions with criteria that insist on pre-determined management modes with little time or space (...) for teachers to ask what ought to count as knowledge or what teaching for student understanding might feel and look like in practice. At the same time, many teachers are .. (shrink)

While environmental philosophers have been striving to extend ethics to deal with future generations and nonhuman life forms, very little work has been undertaken to address what is perhaps a more profound deficiency in received ethical doctrines, that they have very little impact on how people live. I explore Alasdair MacIntyre’s work on narratives and traditions and defend a radicalization of his arguments as a direction for making environmental ethics efficacious.

Este ensaio oferece uma leitura fenomenológica do livro Depois da Virtude de Alasdair MacIntyre. Prentendemos simultaneamente ilustrar as similaridades entre o modo de argumentação de MacIntyre nesta obra e o método inicial de Heidegger da destruição fenomenológica, bem como sublinhar o potencial frutífero de um engajamento mais profundo entre fenomenologia e a obra de MacIntyre. A crítica de MacIntyre à filosofia moral moderna, assim como a destruição de Heidegger, se voltaram para a falta de fundamentação de (...) conceitos abstratos separados do contexto social e experiencial nos quais foram originalmente formulados. Apoiar-se na fenomenologia de Heidegger nos permite compreender melhor a crítica de MacIntyre, bem como o papel de sua noção de uma prática como um corretivo a essas tendências.: This essay offers a phenomenological reading of Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue. It is intended to both illustrate the similarities between MacIntyre’s mode of argumentation in this work and the early Heidegger’s method of phenomenological destruction, and to highlight the potential fruitfulness of a deeper engagement between phenomenology and MacIntyre’s work. MacIntyre’s critique of modern moral philosophy, like Heidegger’s destruction, turned upon the groundlessness of abstract concepts separated from the experiential and social context in which they were originally at home. Drawing upon Heidegger’s phenomenology allows one to better understand MacIntyre’s critique as well as the role of his notion of a practice as a corrective to these tendencies. Keywords : MacIntyre, Phenomenology, Heidegger. (shrink)

In his attempt to explain and draw together disparate aspects of the tradition of the virtues MacIntyre develops a complex and specific concept that he terms a practice. By a practice he means to describe certain types of activities in which excellences can be pursued and that offer those engaged in a practice access to the goods internal to that practice.Sellman and Wainwright have both suggested that there are advantages to be had in understanding nursing as a practice in (...) this MacIntyrean sense. This paper suggests that nursing should be considered as a particular type of MacIntyrean practice, and I have used the term a professional practice to identify this species.This paper also considers some of the implications of such a perspective and suggests that one benefit of thinking of nursing as a professional practice is that it may offer a route by which the virtues necessary for nursing can be identified. (shrink)

There has been significant debate about whether the moral norms of medical practice arise from some feature or set of features internal to the discipline of medicine. In this article, I analyze Edmund Pellegrino’s conception of the internal morality of medicine, and situate it in the context of Alasdair MacIntyre’s influential account of “practice.” Building upon MacIntyre, Pellegrino argued that medicine is a social practice with its own unique goals—namely, the medical, human, and spiritual good of the patient—and (...) that the moral norms that govern medical practice are derived from these goals. After providing an overview of Pellegrino’s work, I discuss some forceful objections to his theory—specifically, that it is too rigid and incapable of entering into dialogue with contemporary values systems; that it is dependent on an external conception of human flourishing; and that it is incompatible with the rapidly changing nature of modern medicine. In the final section of this article, I consider how theorists working in the Hippocratic tradition might respond to these objections against ethical essentialism by drawing upon MacIntyre’s historico-cultural method as well as what he calls Aristotle’s “metaphysical biology.”. (shrink)

Entry on MacIntyre and Business Ethics forthcoming in Poff, D. C. & Michalos, A. C. (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics. Springer.

According to Alasdair MacIntyre's influential account of practices, ‘teaching itself is not a practice, but a set of skills and habits put to the service of a variety of practices’ (MacIntyre and Dunne, 2002, p. 5). Various philosophers of education have responded to and critiqued MacIntyre's position, most notably in a Special Issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Education (Vol. 37.2, 2003). However, both in that Special Issue and since, this debate remains inconclusive. Much of this (...) earlier discussion seems to accept that teaching is a unique case in being a putative practice that does not fit readily into MacIntyre's account. In fact many supposed practices, including some nominated by MacIntyre himself, do not fit his account. A constructive critique of this account leads to a refurbished, broadly MacIntyrean account of practice. This will clarify the issue of whether teaching and a range of other activities are, indeed, practices. (shrink)

This book takes the debate about the rationality of the transition to ethical life in Kierkegaard’s thought in a significantly new direction. Connecting the field of Kierkegaard studies with the meta-ethical debate about practical reasons, and engaging with Alasdair MacIntyre’s and Bernard Williams’ thought, it explores the rationality of the choices for ethical life and Christian existence. Defending a so-called ‘internalist’ understanding of practical reasons, Compaijen argues that previous attempts to defend Kierkegaard against MacIntyre’s charge of irrationality have (...) failed. He provides a thorough analysis of such fundamental topics as becoming oneself, the ideal of objectivity in ethics and religion, the importance of the imagination, the power and limits of philosophical argument, and the relation between grace and nature. This book will be of great interest to Kierkegaard scholars in philosophy and theology, and, more generally, to anyone fascinated by the rationality of the transition to ethical life and the choice to accept Christianity. (shrink)

Recently in this journal Marilyn Gaye Piety argued both that the critique of Kierkegaardian choice Alasdair MacIntyre offers in After Virtue misconstrues Kierkegaard and that a reformulated version of Kierkegaardian choice offers an important gain for philosophy. I argue that Piety has underestimated the power of the Maclntyrean critique of Kierkegaard, that consequently an adequate account of rational choice remains unavailable from that quarter, and that at crucial points MacIntyre’s own socially teleological approach to choice offers a superior (...) account. (shrink)

Julius Kovesi was a moral philosopher contemporary with Alasdair MacIntyre, and dealing with many of the same questions as MacIntyre. In our view, Kovesi’s moral philosophy is rich in ideas and worth revisiting. MacIntyre agrees: Kovesi’s Moral Notions, he has said, is ‘a minor classic in moral philosophy that has not yet received its due’. Kovesi was not a thinker whose work fits readily into any one tradition. Unlike the later MacIntyre, he was not a Thomistic (...) Aristotelian, nor even an Aristotelian. He saw his viewpoint as Platonic, or perhaps more accurately as Socratic. His writings, unlike MacIntyre’s, have little to say about justice. However, Kovesi did offfer a theory of practical reason. His main contention was that all human social life embodies a set of concepts that govern and guide that life, concepts without which that life would be impossible. These include our moral concepts. For Kovesi, moral concepts are not external to, but constitutive of social life in any of its possible forms. But in the course of his argument he also developed a way of thinking about how concepts work, which we term ‘conceptual functionalism’, and which we will elucidate. (shrink)

In recent decades, Alasdair MacIntyre has developed a style of moral philosophy and an argument for Neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics that has deeply influenced business ethics. Most of the work inspired by MacIntyre has dealt with individual and organisational dimensions of business ethics rather than the market economic environment in which individuals and organisations operate. MacIntyre has been a fierce critic of capitalism and economics. He has read Adam Smith an advocate of selfish individualism, rule-based ethics and the (...) banishment of teleology. This reading is seriously defective, and Smith in fact offers much of what MacIntyre calls for in economics. MacIntyre's ethical framework can be made more powerful and useful to business ethicists by incorporating Smithian insights, especially Smith's account of market virtues and teleological account of markets as extended cooperation directed towards the common good of wealth creation. Aside from issues of the interpretation of MacIntyre and Smith, this analysis opens new pathways for dialogue between business ethicists and economists. (shrink)

After MacIntyre contains original essays by leading moral and political philosophers who assess both the merits and limitations of Alasdair MacIntyre's work. Among the themes explored here are MacIntyre's historical arguments about the sources of the failure of modernity; the validity and relevance of his attempt to reinstate the ideas of Aristotle and Aquinas as central to any satisfactory moral understanding; the effectiveness of his critique of modern liberalism; and the adequacy of key concepts, such as tradition (...) and practice, in his analyses and arguments. In addition, MacIntyre responds in a substantial essay to the issues raised by the other contributors. (shrink)

In his influential book After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre identifies Kierkegaard's view of ethics with that of Kant. Both Kant and Kierkegaard, according to MacIntyre, accept the modern paradigm of moral activity for which freedom of the will is the ultimate basis. Ronald M. Green, in Kierkegaard and Kant: The Hidden Debt, accepts and deepens this alignment between the two thinkers. Green argues that Kierkegaard deliberately obscured his debt to Kant by a systematic “misattribution” of his ideas to other (...) thinkers, and to classical philosophy in particular. This essay argues that MacIntyre and Green are mistaken in identifying Kierkegaard with the Kantian tradition of moral autonomy and that they overlook his debt to the classical conception of virtue. In casting Kierkegaard in the role of the quintessential exponent of a modern conception of freedom, they have perhaps overlooked one of the greatest critics of moral autonomy who has ever lived. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre has recently had published two books of selected essays, a study of the phenomenologist Edith Stein, a third edition of After Virtue, and an extensive collection of his early Marxist writings. These are reviewed, along with two recently published commentaries upon his work. The recent reinterpretation and revival of interest in that work receives much support from most of these publications. Central to this reinterpretation is the concept of practices, which MacIntyre first elaborated in After Virtue. (...) His recent work indicates how that concept may be further developed in the direction of a politically radical moral realism. (shrink)

This essay reconstructs Alasdair MacIntyre’s engagement with Marxism with a view both to illuminating the co-ordinates of his mature thought and to outlining a partial critique of that thought. While the critique of Marxism outlined in After Virtue is well known, until recently Marx’s profound influence on MacIntyre was obscured by a thoroughly misleading attempt to label him as a communitarian thinker. If this erroneous interpretation of MacIntyre’s mature thought is now widely discredited, the fact that he (...) has distanced himself from several of the arguments he previously gave for rejecting Marxism both reduces the theoretical space between his mature thought and his early Marxism and highlights a consistent theme in his critique of Marxism since the 1960s to which this essay is addressed: his dissatisfaction with the ethical dimension of Marxist attempts to theorise the relationship between socialist militants and the working-class movement from below. (shrink)

This paper begins by summarizing and distilling Macintyre's sweeping critique of modern business. It identifies the crux of Macintyre's critique as centering on the fundamental Aristotelian concepts of internal goods and practices. Maclntyre essentially follows Aristotle in arguing that by privileging external goods over internal goods, business activity -and certainly modern capitalistic business activity -corrupts practices. Thus, from the perspective of virtue ethics, business is morally indefensible. The paper continues with an evaluation of Macintyre's arguments. The conclusion (...) is drawn that Macintyre's critique, although partially valid, does not vitiate modern business as he claims. In short, modern business need not of necessity be antithetical to individuals' pursuit of internal goods within practices. (shrink)

Today the ethical and normative concerns of everyday citizens are all too often sidelined from the study of political and social issues, driven out by an effort to create a more "scientific" study. This book offers a way for social scientists and political theorists to reintegrate the empirical and the normative, proposing a way out of the scientism that clouds our age. In Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and the Demise of Naturalism: Reunifying Political Theory and Social Science, Jason Blakely (...) argues that the resources for overcoming this divide are found in the respective intellectual developments of Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre. Blakely examines their often parallel intellectual journeys, which led them to critically engage the British New Left, analytic philosophy, phenomenology, continental hermeneutics, and modern social science. Although MacIntyre and Taylor are not sui generis, Blakely claims they each present a new, revived humanism, one that insists on the creative agency of the human person against reductive, instrumental, technocratic, and scientistic ways of thinking. The recovery of certain key themes in these philosophers' works generates a new political philosophy with which to face certain unprecedented problems of our age. Taylor's and MacIntyre's philosophies give social scientists working in all disciplines (from economics and sociology to political science and psychology) an alternative theoretical framework for conducting research. "This book does an excellent job in identifying a real problem in mainstream political theory--its overly normative character and its separation from social science. It contains many original contributions to the field. I particularly liked the way in which the problems of naturalism are presented as institutional, cultural, and political as well as philosophical. The historical background to these problems is also interesting and sheds fresh light on the issues." --Nicholas Smith, Macquarie University. (shrink)

MacIntyre characterises liberal societies as suffering distinctive, structural forms of malaise: they are a ‘disaster’, a ‘moral calamity’, sites of ‘barbarism and darkness’. I argue that, whilst we well understand why MacIntyre thinks liberalism is false, it is unclear why this falsity should imply such moral catastrophe. I begin by motivating the question and distinguishing it from the classic liberal-communitarian debates (§§1-2). In particular, I highlight liberalism’s ability to offer ‘workarounds’, accommodating at least some of MacIntyre’s commitments (...) and so forestalling the prospect of moral disaster. I then introduce two arguments which supply the missing premises, in each case juxtaposing MacIntyre with other critics of liberalism. First, I argue that liberalism’s conception of the private sphere systematically marginalizes MacIntyre’s vision of pedagogy (§3). I compare the argument and the attendant conception of privacy with Adorno’s (§4). In §5, I introduce the second premise: I argue that liberalism espouses a conception of maturity that actively undermines MacIntyre’s model of development, subverting liberal ‘workarounds’. I contrast this claim with recent attacks on liberalism by Deneen. I close with some methodological implications: MacIntyre’s case against liberalism should be seen as a form of external, not immanent, critique. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre and Martha C. Nussbaum are two prominent contemporary moral philosophers who attempt to rehabilitate Aristotle’s conception of virtues. Although both agree that virtue ethics can be considered as a strong alternative to our search for commonalities in a pluralistic society such as Indonesia, each chooses a very different path. While MacIntyre interprets Aristotle from his traditionalist and communitarian perspective, Nussbaum construes the philosopher in a non-relative and essentialist point of view using the perspective of capability. Consequently, (...) MacIntyre construes a more particularistic view of virtue ethics, whereas Nussbaum presents a more universalistic view of virtue ethics. Applying virtue ethics to the Indonesian context, this article argues that each approach will be insufficient to address the highly pluralistic societies such as Indonesia. Therefore, we need to construct a virtue ethics proper to the Indonesian context that takes both approaches into consideration. Keywords: Virtue, virtue ethics, community, capability, incommensurability. Abstrak: Alasdair MacIntyre dan Martha C. Nussbaum merupakan dua orang filsuf moral terkemuka pada masa kini, yang berusaha merehabilitasi konsep Aristoteles mengenai keutamaan. Sekalipun keduanya sepakat bahwa etika keutamaan dapat dipertimbangkan sebuah sebuah alternatif yang memadai bagi usaha kita dalam mencari kesamaan di tengah sebuah masyarakat majemuk seperti Indonesia, masing-masing memilih jalan yang sangat berbeda. Sementara MacIntyre menafsirkan Aristoteles dari perspektif tradisionalis dan komunitarian, Nussbaum memahami sang filsuf dari sebuah sudut pandang esensialis dan nonrelatif dengan memakai pendekatan kapabilitas. Akibatnya, MacIntyre mengkonstruksi sebuah pandangan yang lebih partikular atas etika keutamaan, sementara Nussbaum lebih menghadirkan sebuah pandangan yang lebih universal atas etika keutamaan. Mengaplikasikan etika keutamaan pada konteks Indonesia, artikel ini berpendapat bahwa masing-masing pendekatan tidak akan memadai untuk menjadi masyarakat yang sangat pluralistis seperti Indonesia. Untuk itu, kita perlu mengkonstruksi sebuah etika keutamaan yang kontekstual di Indonesia yang mempertimbangkan dan memanfaatkan kedua pendekatan tersebut. Kata-Kata Kunci: Keutamaan, etika keutamaan, komunitas, kapabilitas, inkomensurabilitas. (shrink)

Este artículo intenta mostrar los comienzos de la filosofía jurídica de Alasdair MacIntyre antes de la publicación de After Virtue. MacIntyre sostiene que en las sociedades liberales la regulación es un sustituto para la moralidad cuando las sociedades no tienen fundamentos morales adecuados. Para entender esta conclusión, se examina la evolución filosófica de MacIntyre desde 1960 hasta 1980.

This article is a discussion of Ralph Johnson’s concept of practice of argumentation. Such practice is characterized by three properties: (1) It is teleological, (2) it is dialectical, and (3) it is manifestly rational. I argue that Johnson’s preferred definition of practice—which is Alasdair MacIntyre’s concept of practice as a human activity with internal goods accessible through partcipation in that same activity—does not fit these properties or features. I also suggest that this failure should not require Johnson to adjust (...) the properties to make them fit the practice concept. While MacIntyre’s concept of practice clearly has some attractive features, it does not provide what Johnson wants from a concept of practice. (shrink)

MacIntyre argues that management embodies emotivism, and thus is inherently amoral and manipulative. His claim that management is necessarily Weberian is, at best, outdated, and the notion that management aims to be neutral and value free is incorrect. However, new forms of management, and in particular the increased emphasis on leadership which emerged after MacIntyre’s critique was published, tend to support his central charge. Indeed, charismatic and transformational forms of leadership seem to embody emotivism to a greater degree (...) than do more Weberian, bureaucratic forms of management; hence, MacIntyre’s central contention about our emotivistic culture seems to be well founded. Having criticised the details but defended the essence of MacIntyre’s critique of management, this paper sketches a MacIntyrean approach to management and leadership by highlighting the affinities between MacIntyre’s political philosophy and Greenleaf’s concept of servant leadership. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show how a MacIntyre-inspired business school could contribute to developing practical wisdom in students through its curriculum, methods, faculty, student selection criteria, and governance. Despite MacIntyre's critiques, management can be presented, in MacIntyrean terms, as a second-order, domain-relative practice, with practical wisdom as corresponding virtue. Management education consists in developing practical wisdom. How? Primarily by initiating students and enabling them to participate in communal traditions of inquiry focused on, although not limited (...) to, the purposes and ends of business. The transmission of objective knowledge, analytical skills, and techniques is subordinated to the end goal. We consider traditions centered on shareholder value maximization, the balancing of stakeholder interests, and the fulfillment of the common good of firms. Each gives rise to a particular kind of business school. A MacIntyrean business school is one that seeks the common good of firms. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre is considered one of the most prominent moral philosophers in the contemporary period. Nevertheless, some authors criticize his views on practical rationality as being relativistic. Though there have been authors who have defended MacIntyre through various arguments, none of these authors has referred to one of his later works, namely, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (DRA) for addressing the relativist challenge. The paper aims to fill this lacuna. Thus, the principal question to (...) which the paper responds is: Can the views discussed in DRA contribute toward addressing the relativist challenge raised against MacIntyre? Accordingly, through various arguments, the paper demonstrates that MacIntyre’s views on animal rationality, vulnerability, and dependence as well as those concerning the virtues of care and misericordia as discussed in DRA contribute their mite toward addressing the relativist challenge raised against him. Abstrak Alasdair MacIntyre merupakan salah satu pakar filsafat moral terkemuka di era kontemporer. Namun, beberapa pemikir menuduh konsepnya tentang rasionalitas praktis bersifat relativistis. Meski banyak penulis lain telah berusaha membela posisi MacIntyre, tidak satu pun dari mereka mendasarkan diri pada karya MacIntyre yang lebih mutakhir, y.i. Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (DRA). Makalah ini berusaha untuk mengisi kekosongan tersebut. Maka, pertanyaan utama tulisan ini ialah apakah gagasan-gagasan yang dikembangkan MacIntyre di dalam DRA dapat dipakai untuk menghadapi tuduhan relativisme terhadapnya. Artikel ini hendak menunjukkan bahwa konsep-konsep yang dikemukakan di dalam DRA, seperti “rasionalitas hewani” (animal rationality), kerapuhan, ketergantungan, kepedulian, dan belarasa (misericordia) dapat dipergunakan untuk menangkis tuduhan bahwa MacIntyre jatuh kedalam relativisme. Kata-kata Kunci: Alasdair MacIntyre, rasionalitas praktis, relativismemoral, rasionalitas hewani, kerapuhan, kepedulian. (shrink)

MacIntyre’s critique of liberalism relies crucially on a distinctive moral particularism, for which morality and rationality are fundamentally tradition-constituted. In light of this, some have detected in his work a moral relativism, radically in tension with his endorsement of a Thomist universalism. I dispute this reading, arguing instead that MacIntyre is a consistent universalist who pays due attention to the moral-epistemic importance of traditions. Analysing his teleological understanding of rational enquiry, I argue that this approach shows how it (...) is possible, dialectically, to reconcile the particularity of our starting-points with the assertion of universal truths. What MacIntyre offers, I contend, is a moral universalism that avoids the pitfalls of its liberal counterpart, and invites an important meta-theoretical shift with respect to the scope for toleration and social critique and toleration in contemporary pluralist society. (shrink)

Despite the profound potential of MacIntyre’s revolutionary virtue paradigm, management scholars have struggled to make sense of one of the most contentious and insightful philosophers of our time. This conceptual paper attempts to move past the transliteration of MacIntyre in favour of a translation of his contribution in a manner than retains something closer to its full meaning, while helpfully guiding empirical efforts to apply this emerging paradigm to modern organisations. This translation entails a dismissal of MacIntyre’s (...) hypercritical bias in order to accommodate an expansion of his ideas into the language and logic of management theory and practice. Schein’s methodological roadmap for deciphering culture is offered, as is theory-building using comparative case research, as offering two particularly promising directions for future empirical studies that seek to use the theory of virtue in order to reconceptualise and study the modern organisation. (shrink)

Andrew Wicks recently reflected “On The Practical Relevance of Feminist Thought to Business.” Part of his reflection focussed on my contributions to this subject. In critiquing my work, Wicks notes the similarity between my views on business and those of Alasdair MacIntyre. He goes on to give a brief overview of our position as he sees it. Wicks’s overview, although insightful, is misleading in certain key respects. My purpose in this response, therefore, is to clarify MacIntyre’s views on (...) business. In doing this I will, by default, clarify my own.MacIntyre himself might be surprised by the frequency with which his name appears in the business-ethics discourse. Although, over a period spanning nearly fifty years, he has written prolifically on the subject of ethics, he has only, as far as I am aware, written two brief articles directly addressing the subject of business ethics. Why then should we in business or in business ethics concern ourselves with his views? I think our interest in MacIntyre stems from our interest in virtue ethics, specifically our interest in the applicability of the virtues to business. When it comes to virtue ethics MacIntyre is recognized as an authority, if not the authority. Even his fiercest detractors would, I hope, admit that he has been largely responsible for the resurrection of classical philosophy in the latter half of this century. His bookAfter Virtue,in which he criticizes modernity and praises a classical virtue-based approach to ethics, is undoubtedly one the most influential books on moral philosophy written this century. Indeed, as postmodernism gains steam as a cultural force, its full influence is perhaps yet to be determined. If MacIntyre’s critique of modernity proves correct, then much of business-ethics theory—not to mention moral theory in general—would be discredited. Thus interest in MacIntyre’s thesis, from many quarters, is understandable. (shrink)

Influenciado por Thomas Kuhn, Alasdair MacIntyre presenta una teoría conceptualmente relativista sobre las tradiciones de investigación, la cual pretende no sólo describir la estructura de las distintas tradiciones, sino también encontrar un principioque permita resolver las disputas entre ellas. Se..

Según Alasdair MacIntyre, la Universidad liberal descansa en ficciones que encubren sus propósitos y le proporcionan una legitimidad engañosa. Esta crítica no siempre se ha entendido en su profundidad, y se suele ver en ella una actitud reaccionaria de retorno nostálgico a la Universidad medieval. Se analizan esas ficciones: la sobre-especialización como sinónimo de profundidad investigativa, la neutralidad y la objetividad como posibilitadoras de racionalidad, y la excelencia en la gestión como forma de asegurar el logro de sus objetivos. (...) Se muestra cómo, a través de esta denuncia, aparece una postura revolucionaria, influida por Marx y Nietzsche, que busca desenmascarar las contradicciones internas de la Universidad liberal. According to Alasdair MacIntyre, the liberal University is based on fictions that hide its purposes and provide a misleading legitimacy. This critique has not always been understood in its depth and is often seen as a reactionary attitude, nostalgic for the medieval University. This article analyzes these fictions: over-specialization as a synonym for deep research, neutrality and objectivity as enablers of rationalism, and excellence in management as a form of ensuring its objectives. It shows how this indictment manifests a revolutionary position, influenced by Marx and Nietzsche, which seeks to unmask the internal contradictions of the liberal University. (shrink)

Since its publication in 1981, Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue has made a significant impact throughout the humanities disciplines. This new collection unpacks the influence of After Virtue on ethical and political theory, sociology and theology, and offers a multi-faceted exploration of its significance.

Patrick Byrne argues that MacIntyre’s account of practical reasoning is inadequate because it is based upon a notion of flourishing that places too much emphasis on impersonal facts, likewise because it is excessively focused on means without considering the role of desire for ends, and because it is does not account for the role of feelings in explaining how knowledge of ends is attained. In this essay, I argue that MacIntyre’s account provides adequate responses to each of these (...) concerns. But more broadly, I argue that Byrne is right to suggest that a Lonerganian perspective offers important insights that can extend MacIntyre’s neo-Aristotelian practical philosophy. Specifically, Lonergan’s account of the generalized empirical method may inform MacIntyre’s theory of rival, and potentially incommensurable traditions, explaining how standards of argument are both transcultural and historically articulated. (shrink)

Despite the profound potential of MacIntyre’s revolutionary virtue paradigm, management scholars have struggled to make sense of one of the most contentious and insightful philosophers of our time. This conceptual paper attempts to move past the transliteration of MacIntyre in favour of a translation of his contribution in a manner than retains something closer to its full meaning, while helpfully guiding empirical efforts to apply this emerging paradigm to modern organisations. This translation entails a dismissal of MacIntyre’s (...) hypercritical bias in order to accommodate an expansion of his ideas into the language and logic of management theory and practice. Schein’s methodological roadmap for deciphering culture is offered, as is theory-building using comparative case research, as offering two particularly promising directions for future empirical studies that seek to use the theory of virtue in order to reconceptualise and study the modern organisation. (shrink)

Some years ago, 1985, Alasdair MacIntyre wrote a paper onThe Idea of an Educated Public in which he argued that the only route open for educators for the future, in order to emerge out of the current moral ‘crisis’ created by the ‘emotivist’ modernist culture is to bring back the idea of an ‘educated public’ from the Scottish Enlightenment and to regard education as education into such a public. The notion of an ‘educated public’, in effect, reappears also in (...) all his later books on moral philosophy, particular his latest,Three Rival Theories of Moral Enquiry, where he takes up his original proposal that educated publics should grow around universities and canvasses the new idea that under contemporary conditions what we may need is not one universal university but three kinds contextualized within the three rival kinds of cultural and moral programmes he identifies, and, correspondingly, three kinds of educated public. This paper tries to trace the evolution of MacIntyre's idea of an educated public throughout his work, arguing that there is one particular perspective on the idea which he strangely omits, that represented by Dewey/Habermas, and critiquing his final solution on the basis of its possibility and political desirability. (shrink)

The contribution to contemporary philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre is enormous. His writings on ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, philosophy of the social sciences and the history of philosophy have established him as one of the philosophical giants of the last fifty years. His best-known book, After Virtue, spurred the profound revival of virtue ethics. Moreover, MacIntyre, unlike so many of his contemporaries, has exerted a deep influence beyond the bourns of academic philosophy. This volume focuses on the (...) major themes of MacIntyre's work with critical expositions of MacIntyre's views on the history of philosophy, the role of tradition in philosophical inquiry, the philosophy of the social sciences, moral philosophy, political theory, and his critique of the assumptions and institutions of modernity. Written by a distinguished team of philosophers, this volume will have a wide appeal outside philosophy to students in the social sciences, law, theology, and political theory. (shrink)

I argue that, in analysing the structure and development of moral traditions, MacIntyre relies primarily on Kuhn's model of scientific tradition, rather than on Lakatos' model. I unpack three foci of Kuhn's conception of the sciences, namely: the ‘crisis’ conception of scientific development, what I call the ‘systematic conception’ of scientific paradigms, and the view that successive paradigms are incommensurable. I then show that these three foci are integrated into MacIntyre's account of the development of moral traditions with (...) a surprising degree of faithfulness to Kuhn. And crucially, I argue against the overall cogency of his account, given the disparities I pinpoint between scientific and moral traditions. My overall critique is, however, fundamentally friendly, since nothing I have to say invalidates the very notion of a moral tradition, and all I am calling for are less problematic construals of that notion. (shrink)

Esta investigação, partindo do diagnóstico da modernidade empreendido por Alasdair MacIntyre, destina-se a avaliar a possibilidade de conciliação entre o discurso universalizante dos direitos humanos e a ética particularista sustentada pelo autor citado a partir do referencial ético aristotélico. A convergência entre os bens individuais, consubstanciados em direitos, e o bem comum, componente essencial da prática e do pensamento éticos, pode representar relevante contribuição teórica no campo de estudos dos direitos humanos. Neste trabalho, dada a limitação da sua natureza, (...) intentou-se analisar os três problemas intrínsecos à concepção de direitos, conforme a perspectiva de MacIntyre: a) a ideia de que sujeitos de direitos são indivíduos morais autônomos e plenamente independentes; b) a separação do bem individual do bem comum; c) a deflação da razão prática comunitária, em relação à racionalidade individual. O trabalho empreendido teve como resultado uma exposição analítica dos pontos de contraste entre a perspectiva dos direitos humanos e a ética conforme compreendida por MacIntyre, necessária para preparar bases de uma possível reconciliação entre ambas. (shrink)

In this paper, I reconstruct Alasdair MacIntyre's aretaic, practical philosophy, drawing out its implications for professional ethics in general and the practice of teaching in particular. After reviewing the moral theory as a whole, I examine MacIntyre's notion of internal goods. Defined within the context of practices, such goods give us reason to reject the very idea of applied ethics. Being goods for the practitioner, they suggest that the eudaimonia of the practitioner is central to professional ethics. In (...) this way, MacIntyre's moral theory helps us recover the untimely question, how does teaching contribute to the flourishing of the teacher? (shrink)