RichardPoirier
Posted February 10, 2009
One of the most important philosophy books of the 20th century. Helps those of us living in modernity to understand why what we observe in human behavior and the way that institutions function are inconsistent with how people and institutions represent themselves. I am not referring to mere hypocrisy, which has always existed, but a server limitation of one¿s own understanding of the magnitude of contradictory principles that guide action today. MacIntyre famously draws qualified parallels between the conditions shortly before the Roman Empire¿s decline into the Dark Ages and conditions facing our own age in Europe and North America. One parallel is that people of good-will reach a turning point when they no longer believe that those in government possess civility and moral integrity - virtues that communities value. One difference he points out is that Rome¿s adversarial barbarians were ¿waiting beyond the frontiers,¿ whereas the barbarians of today ¿have been governing us for quite some time.¿ This notion that we are governed by barbarians provides a new frame of reference we may use in evaluating the two major American political parties and the motives and actions of President Obama for the next four years. Political rhetoric will never sound the same after reading this book. I highly recommend it. <BR/><BR/>Richard Poirier, Los Angeles, CA
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Overview
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."
About the Author:
Alasdair MacIntyre is research professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame
"A stunning new study of ethics by one of the foremost moral philosophers in the English-speaking world."--Newsweek
Editorial Reviews
From the Publisher
“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
“After Virtue is a rigorous, ambitious, and original book. It is a reinterpretation of the entire history of Western moral philosophy, as decline, fall, and—possibly—rebirth.” —The Village Voice
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Table of Contents
Prologue: After Virtue after a Quarter of a Century ix
Preface xvii
A Disquieting Suggestion 1
The Nature of Moral Disagreement Today and the Claims of Emotivism 6
Emotivism: Social Content and Social Context 23
The Predecessor Culture and the Enlightenment Project of Justifying Morality 36
Why the Enlightenment Project of Justifying Morality Had to Fail 51
Some Consequences of the Failure of the Enlightenment Project 62
'Fact', Explanation and Expertise 79
The Character of Generalizations in Social Science and their Lack of Predictive Power 88
Nietzsche or Aristotle? 109
The Virtues of Heroic Societies 121
The Virtues of Athens 131
Aristotle's Account of the Virtues 146
Medieval Aspects and Occasions 165
The Nature of the Virtues 181
The Virtues, the Unity of a Human Life and the Concept of a Tradition 204
From the Virtues to Virtue and after Virtue 226
Justice as a Virtue: Changing Conceptions 244
After Virtue: Nietzsche or Aristotle, Trotsky and St. Benedict 256
Postscript to the Second Edition 264
Bibliography 279
Index 283