Macintyre S After Virtue At 40

"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"--

Highly controversial when it was first published in 1981, Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue has since established itself as a landmark work in contemporary moral philosophy. In this book, MacIntyre sought to address a crisis in moral language that he traced back to a European Enlightenment that had made the formulation of moral principles increasingly difficult. In the search for a way out of this impasse, MacIntyre returns to an earlier strand of ethical thinking, that of Aristotle, who emphasised the importance of 'virtue' to the ethical life. More than thirty years after its original publication, After Virtue remains a work that is impossible to ignore for anyone interested in our understanding of ethics and morality today.

Since its publication in 1981, Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue has been recognised as a classic. Primarily a work of moral philosophy, it also draws on sociology, classics, political science and theology to effect a unique intellectual synthesis, and its combination of erudition and challenging, even provocative argument has made a significant impact throughout the humanities disciplines. This volume of new essays unpacks the influence of After Virtue on ethical and political theory, sociology and theology, and offers a multi-faceted exploration of its significance. The essays offer a way into MacIntyre's philosophy, and demonstrate how, rather than waning in influence over the past forty years, his most seminal text has found an ever-wider audience and continues to inspire controversy and debate in the humanities.

After Virtue is a watershed in MacIntyre's career. It follows his emergence from Marxism, but draws on Marxist sources and arguments. It precedes his move to Thomism, but already draws on Augustine and Aquinas. Because of its watershed nature, it has gained a wide readership in various fields but it treats a variety of issues in ways that are unfamiliar either to Marxists schooled in the social sciences or to Thomists schooled in medieval metaphysics. Reading Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue provides a commentary that will be accessible to students, valuable to scholars, and useful to teachers. Students will find help to navigate the two main arguments of After Virtue, to understand its interpretation of history, and to engage its proposal for a form of ethics and politics that returns to the tradition of the virtues. Scholars will find the book useful as a general guide to MacIntyre's ethics. Teachers will find a book that can help to direct their students' reading and keep classroom discussions focused on the book's central concerns.

With variety and breadth, these essays celebrate the 800th anniversary of the foundation of the Dominican Order as well as the richness in Catholic thought and praxis during the past hundred years around the world. Their themes range from Yves Congar's view of the hierarchy to Jacques Loew's theory of ministry in the workplace. Ideas from thinkers interacting with Islam and Judaism lead on to a theology of refugees. A book for those pondering theology amid history and culture.

MacIntyre is greatly discontented with the nature of contemporary morality, which according to him has a form, i.e. what appears like morality, but lacks essential content. He argues that the most common feature of contemporary ethical discourse is that much of it is used to express individual preferences, which leads to disagreements among philosophers, and eventually results in debates that are interminable in character. MacIntyre attributes the cause of this situation to the activities of the enlightenment philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries who, in an attempt to find rational justification for morality repudiated those essential elements that define the essence of morality and give it its contents. Such elements include historical narrative, tradition, teleology, and divine law. In MacIntyres opinion, morality so constructed was destined for failure, since it was not founded on the true nature of the human person. The obvious consequences of this failure were the birth of diverse post-enlightenment ethical theories and a substantial change in the conception of virtue. In order to remedy this deplorable condition of contemporary ethics MacIntyre, along with other virtue ethicists, advocates a certain renaissance of ethical principles that are founded on the true nature of the human person, characterized by historical narrative, tradition, and teleology, all grounded on divine legislation. Morality thus reconstructed finds its fullest expression in the theory of human character traits, i.e. virtues. This is what has motivated MacIntyres construction of virtue theory, which has brought him into confrontation with the enlightenment philosophers. Our study and analysis of MacIntyres theory of virtue reveals that his account of virtue is inadequate. This inadequacy is what has motivated our own project of reconstructing MacIntyres theory of virtue in view of offering an account of virtue that is adequate. In this way our own project complements that of MacIntyre.

Explores Alasdair MacIntyre's criticisms of the manager and retrieves an interdisciplinary approach to character transforming arguments. The manager as wise steward is proposed as a model for virtuous management.