49 pages • 1 hour read
Alasdair MacIntyreAfter Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1981A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “‘Fact,’ Explanation and Expertise”
“Fact” as a concept developed in the early Enlightenment era of the 17th century, when scientists began to assume that an observer can confront scientific phenomena “face-to-face without any theoretical interpretation” (79)—which MacIntyre describes as “an error” and one recognized as such by modern scientists. However, the idea of “fact” led to the development of empiricism in philosophy, based on observed experience, and to the “conceit” that modern (i.e., Enlightenment) thinkers had freed themselves from “interpretation and theory,” especially as embodied in Aristotle’s thought, and could now see things plainly as they really were.
This in turn led to a new distinction between “facts” and “values” and between morality and science which was unknown in the Aristotelian system. Explaining mechanical processes began to take precedence over explaining action in terms of ends or purposes, with human actions in particular being disassociated from any consideration of “good or virtue.” The result of this change is, MacIntyre writes, a “divorce between ‘is’ and ‘ought’” (84).
The new mechanistic science of human behavior opened the door to the possibility of scientists manipulating human behavior for the sake of influencing nature or society, and then treating this activity as an exercise of their “rational autonomy.” However, this has not led to any actual improvement of humanity or society, but rather to a “social performance which disguises itself as such achievement” (85), embodied in the expertise of the bureaucratic manager, whose “expertise” increasingly dominates both government and social life in modern times. MacIntyre will next address the question of whether bureaucracy is scientific and whether it has earned the right to run society.
Chapter 8 Summary: “The Character of Generalizations in Social Science and their Lack of Predictive Power”
Managerial expertise depends on the ability to produce “law-like generalizations with strong predictive power” (88) that will help in shaping public policies. The problem is that social science has proven itself incapable of discovering any such generalizations about human behavior in the way that the hard sciences do.
MacIntyre identifies four sources of “systematic unpredictability.” It is logically impossible to predict a radical invention before it happens because in conceiving it, one will have already invented it. Consequently, it is difficult or impossible to predict the future of science. There are strong elements of chance and imperfect knowledge in social life, similar to a game like chess. The challenge lies in shaping our lives, plans, and goals and preserving our personal freedom despite this unpredictability. We are, in effect, trying to make our world predictable but ourselves unpredictable.
The social sciences attempt to help us plan for the future, but they are unable to add more predictability than is available in actual life. Thus, the dream of the social sciences to create an absolutely predictable society is doomed by the facts of life.
One positive consequence of this is that extreme totalitarianism will be impossible to achieve. However, what humanity will get instead is a kind of “soft” totalitarianism, characterized by “rigidity and inefficiency” which will nevertheless “contribute in the long run to its defeat” (106). Moreover, although bureaucracy does affect our lives negatively, attempts at manipulation have little success because of the unpredictable nature of life. Indeed, managerial expertise accomplishes little and is, at heart, nothing but a modern illusion or “masquerade.”
Chapter 9 Summary: “Nietzsche or Aristotle?”
Thanks to the Enlightenment conception of every human being as a sovereign moral agent, “morality has become generally available in a quite new way” (110), with the result that almost any issue can be given a moral “face.” At the same time, modern moral discourse continues to rely on concepts from the older, pre-Enlightenment culture that are no longer universally believed, including deontology (which presupposes a divine lawgiver) and teleology (which assumes a natural end for human beings).
Thus, modern moral discourse exhibits an inconsistency and incoherence which prevent moral problems from ever being solved. In support of this thesis, MacIntyre looks at another culture that went through a similar transformation of values: Polynesia in the 19th century.
When English explorers led by Captain Cook landed in the Polynesian islands in the late-18th century, they were surprised at the existence of taboos, or forbidden behavior. However, in 1819, King Kamehameha abolished the taboos easily and with little fanfare. From this event, MacIntyre draws the conclusion that moral rules are at first embedded in a social context, and when this context is taken away, the taboos easily fall away too.
MacIntyre draws an analogy between the Polynesians and the situation in modern Western culture with regard to morality. Like the Polynesians, Western culture holds on to particular moral values without any means of rationally justifying them, because Westerners have discarded the cultural context in which the taboos originally made sense.
For MacIntyre, Nietzsche is “the moral philosopher of the present age” (114) because he understood and pointed out this inherent hypocrisy and contradiction. Specifically, Nietzsche argued that, because the Enlightenment’s attempts to rationally vindicate morality fail, moral rules need to be explained as mere expressions of will and desire, thus leading in the direction of emotivism.
In light of Nietzsche’s powerful critique, MacIntyre stakes the claim that we must choose between Nietzsche and Aristotle. Either Nietzsche’s view of the modern situation is correct, or else Aristotle’s view of ethics was right all along. As MacIntyre puts it, “the defensibility of the Nietzschean position turns in the end on the answer to the question: was it right in the first place to reject Aristotle?” (117).
To answer this question, we must try to understand Aristotle better by delving into the moral and conceptual world which he inherited. Therefore, in the following chapters, MacIntyre will explore the ethical world of ancient Greek society.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
At roughly the midpoint of the book, this group of chapters includes much conceptual analysis about the theory of knowledge as it developed during the Enlightenment. It culminates in the major crux of MacIntyre’s argument: the need to choose between the teachings of Nietzsche or of Aristotle for the future direction of society.
MacIntyre elaborates on what the rejection of teleology implied. With the loss of the concept of a final end, the emphasis in ethics came to fall on the technical details of action instead of conforming to the older view that Morality Is Ultimately About Character. This was a direct outgrowth from the scientific emphasis on discovering the mechanical processes inherent in nature, detached from any sense of larger purpose (an idea now deemed to be illusory). Aristotle’s teleology was rejected as unscientific, and only mechanistic explanations (“law-like generalizations”) were deemed to be truly scientific.
The root error here, in MacIntyre’s view, was to assume that we can grasp “facts” exactly as they are without any interpretation intervening. Thus, the concept of “fact” as “value-free”—a concept which governs much of modern thought—is an illusion. On similar grounds, the modern assumption that “ought” (i.e., moral duty) cannot be deduced from “is” (i.e., fact) is questionable.
These are among the assumptions that underlie the modern disciplines of social science and bureaucracy, and they have also pervaded our thinking about many problems not strictly related to science. MacIntyre questions whether such putatively scientific thinking is really scientific at all, since life is filled with elements of uncertainty, unpredictability, and the need to interpret the world around us. All of this argues against the idea that life can be reduced to “law-like generalizations,” as this branch of science assumes.
MacIntyre uses the history of the Polynesians as an illustration to shed light on the moral shift that took place in Western society. By arguing that a non-Western culture went through a similar shift, MacIntyre suggests that this shift in moral thinking is universal once moral virtues and taboos become divorced from the wider cultural context that imbued them with meaning. In once more drawing upon historical context, MacIntyre demonstrates through his own analysis that Moral Philosophy Is Socially and Historically Embodied.
In this section and in other parts of the book, MacIntyre refers to the thought of the German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920). A highly influential social thinker, Weber was best known for his theorizing about religion, capitalism, and bureaucracy. MacIntyre argues that “the contemporary vision of the world […] is predominantly […] Weberian” (109) because it is dominated by the values of utility and bureaucratic management much discussed by Weber.
In Chapter 9, MacIntyre poses the question “Nietzsche or Aristotle?” In the rest of the book, he will work out the implications of this binary choice between two moral visions for future society. MacIntyre has structured his book so it reaches its own telos in the resolution of this dramatic question.
