After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory

“A moral philosophy—and emotivism is no exception—characteristically presupposes a sociology.”

Building on the previous quote, MacIntyre declares one of his major ideas, that moral philosophy is embodied in “the real social world” (23). More specifically, a moral philosophy includes not just moral principles and rules but also an explanation of attitudes, motives, and intentions as they affect moral action.

“Bureaucratic rationality is the rationality of matching means to ends economically and efficiently.”

For MacIntyre, bureaucracy and the bureaucratic manager are among the characteristic features of modern society. Bureaucracy claims to be value-free and interested only in carrying out technical processes efficiently; consideration of virtue does not enter into the bureaucratic ethic. In this way, bureaucracy contrasts strongly with older moral traditions.

“Characters are the masks worn by moral philosophies.”

Building on his idea that moral philosophy is socially embodied, MacIntyre posits that such philosophy is manifested in certain social types or “characters” that are typical of a particular period of history. In modern society, the aesthete, the bureaucrat, and the therapist are three of the most prominent of these “characters.”

“[T]he failure of philosophy to provide what religion could no longer furnish was an important cause of philosophy losing its central cultural role and becoming a marginal, narrowly academic subject.”

With the rise of the secular rationalism of the Enlightenment, religion became marginalized. However, due to the philosophers’ failure to provide a rationalist basis for morality, philosophy could not connect with the deeper spiritual needs of the “general literate public” and thus itself became marginal and irrelevant to most people’s lives. This is part of MacIntyre’s explanation of the process that led to the collapse of moral argument, as seen in emotivism.

“But once the notion of essential human purposes or functions disappears from morality, it begins to appear implausible to treat moral judgments as factual statements.”

MacIntyre is here referring to the split in modern philosophical thinking between “fact” and “value,” which effectively relegates moral values and virtues to a space outside the realm of rational discourse. The split is rooted in the loss of belief in final ends or purposes which determine essential natures, i.e., that human beings have an essential nature and goal to which their actions contribute.

“Abstract changes in moral concepts are always embodied in real, particular events.”

This passage is a statement of MacIntyre’s core belief that Moral Philosophy Is Socially and Historically Embodied. Moral ideas have consequences in the real world, and great statesmen express in their actions many of the ideas of the thinkers of the day. Throughout the book, MacIntyre urges readers to be aware of the historical and social significance—and the contemporary relevance—of philosophy.

“The problems of modern moral theory emerge clearly as the product of the failure of the Enlightenment project.”

MacIntyre argues that our current difficulty in talking about morality and resolving moral issues is rooted in historical developments stemming from the Enlightenment—developments that led to a rejection of the classical idea that Morality Is Ultimately About Character and a subsequent turn to emotivism. The quote reinforces MacIntyre’s emphasis on the need to look to history to find out how we got to where we are.

“But the use of a conceptual fiction in a good cause does not make it any less of a fiction.”

MacIntyre has argued that the concept of “natural rights,” as propounded by Enlightenment thought, is a “fiction,” albeit one that has led to a great many beneficial social reforms. This discussion leads MacIntyre to argue that a morality based on rights instead of virtues leads to a dead end because the core concept does not exist.

“The history of utilitarianism thus links historically the eighteenth-century project of justifying morality and the twentieth century’s decline into emotivism.”

MacIntyre sees the philosophy of utilitarianism as a historical link from the Enlightenment to modern emotivism because it made happiness and pleasure the basis of morality, thus undermining any claim that morality was based on objectivity and reason. This quote shows MacIntyre’s attempt to engage in careful historical analysis and establish clear historical linkages throughout the book.

“Each moral agent now spoke unconstrained by the externalities of divine law, natural teleology or hierarchical authority; but why should anyone else now listen to him?”

Enlightenment philosophy aimed at liberating people from what were perceived as the constraints of tradition and authority, thereby delivering them into the freedom of personal autonomy. However, the problem, in MacIntyre’s analysis, is that the individual no longer had any moral authority on which to stand, and this in time led to the shift to emotivism as the only recourse left for moral argument.

“To a disturbing extent our morality will be disclosed as a theatre of illusions.”

MacIntyre argues that the modern “moral scene” is based on a number of concepts, like natural rights and managerial effectiveness, that lack rational justification and are thus fictitious. They are merely a façade to give the impression that we are engaging in moral discourse, which connects to MacIntyre’s claims about the enervating effects of emotivism.

“Twentieth-century social life turns out in key part to be the concrete and dramatic re-enactment of eighteenth-century philosophy.”

Echoing his theme that Moral Philosophy Is Socially and Historically Embodied, MacIntyre makes the explicit claim that the modern era is, in some sense, a completion of the plans and ideals of the Enlightenment. These, in MacIntyre’s analysis, include the expansion of natural rights and the management of society by bureaucracy, accompanied by the ideals of “value neutrality” and “manipulative power.”

“It is at once clear that many of the central features of human life derive from the particular and peculiar ways in which predictability and unpredictability interlock.”

MacIntyre examines the methods of the modern social sciences, aimed at predicting future events and behavior. The problem is that life thrives on an interaction between the predictable and the unpredictable, and thus to some extent the sciences are predicated on something undesirable or impossible.

“What the totalitarian project will always produce will be a kind of rigidity and inefficiency which may contribute in the long run to its defeat.”

Here, MacIntyre considers the possible relationship between managerial manipulation and totalitarianism. Although he concedes that the former may produce the latter, there is the compensating factor that, with time, these forces are self-defeating. In the meantime, however, it can do great damage. On a larger level, totalitarianism is implied in MacIntyre’s interpretation to be the end result of the loss of virtues.

“It is histrionic success which gives power and authority in our culture. The most effective bureaucrat is the best actor.”

Due to the dominance of emotivism and the fact that modern moral life is a “theatre of illusions,” bureaucratic management is largely make-believe in which the bureaucrat pretends in godlike fashion to have things under his control. MacIntyre suggests that belief in managerial control has substituted a belief in God, and that we applaud those who give the best appearance of power and ability.

“Hence 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?”

The crux of the entire book is the question of whether we should choose Nietzsche’s or Aristotle’s worldview. For MacIntyre, these are the only viable options because, after the rejection of Aristotle, only Nietzsche understood the impossibility of constructing a rationally-justifiable ethical system on the Enlightenment model.

“Rules become the primary concept of the moral life. Qualities of character then generally come to be prized only because they will lead us to follow the right set of rules.”

MacIntyre is here referring to the shift from a virtue-based (i.e., the idea that Morality Is Ultimately About Character) system to a rule-based (deontological) system of ethics, which gradually took place during the modern era. In this new system, virtues become merely a means to an end, whereas in Aristotelianism, they were a constitutive part of man’s telos or ultimate goal. MacIntyre believes that in rejecting character-centered ethics, virtues are minimized or even neglected.

“To be a good man will in every Greek view be at least closely allied to being a good citizen.”

In Greek thought, morality and society were organically connected, and thus Aristotelianism is communitarian in outlook. A human being was connected by various ties to the community and the city-state. MacIntyre contrasts this with the modern ethical view based on individualism, in which “strangers” come together and must come up with a way to live together without infringing on one another’s rights.

“Man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal.”

From his ideas about the connection of morality to history and society, MacIntyre argues that Human Life Is a Story or Narrative, with storytelling and narrative as essential frameworks for understanding morality and human life. Life is itself a story containing moral choices and actions and a “quest” for a goal, and morality is imparted and understood in terms of narrative. This view, for Macintyre, represents life as a coherent whole and is undermined by modern ethics, which tends to make life seem random and chaotic and to isolate the individual from other human beings.

“The good life for man is the life spent in seeking for the good life for man, and the virtues necessary for the seeking are those which will enable us to understand what more and what else the good life for man is.”

This is MacIntyre’s “provisional conclusion about the good life for man” (219), which he draws in his chapter about narrative, life unity, and tradition. Reflecting Aristotelian ideals, MacIntyre’s conclusion defines the good life as a journey that we make toward a telos or goal with the help of virtues, which in turn give us ever-greater intellectual knowledge and understanding.

“For the story of my life is always embedded in the story of those communities from which I derive my identity.”

Building on the idea of life as a narrative, MacIntyre emphasizes that humans are social creatures whose life stories are tied to the life stories of other people. Following the Aristotelian view, we are each born with an inheritance of tradition, which ties us to our community and gives us our own identity and selfhood. MacIntyre presents this in contrast to modern individualism, which tends to isolate human beings.

“Traditions, when vital, embody continuities of conflict.”

Although MacIntyre emphasizes the importance of tradition, he defines tradition as living and dynamic rather than static. Part of what makes tradition vital, for MacIntyre, is that it can include argument and dialogue about key issues. According to MacIntyre, this sets his vision apart from certain “ideological” views of tradition stemming from the conservative philosopher Edmund Burke, who regarded tradition as more monolithic and less flexible.

“For what education in the virtues teaches me is that my good as a man is one and the same as the good of those others with whom I am bound up in human community.”

For MacIntyre, virtue ethics teaches us to view ourselves in a larger, social context in which we are all pursuing similar goals and ideals. Thus, the problem of how to curb egotism or evil passions does not really arise, which MacIntyre believes is one of the advantages of virtue ethics. Virtue ethics, in MacIntyre’s interpretation, brings human beings together instead of isolating them in the pursuit of individual desires.