Alasdair MacIntyre

Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre ( Glasgow ( Scotland ), January 12 1929 ) is a British philosopher primarily known for his contribution to moral philosophyand political philosophy . He has also published widely on the history of philosophy and theology . In his moral philosophy, especially in his famous workAfter Virtue (1981), he criticizes the modern ethical theories and calls for a revival of virtue ethics . In his political thinking he agitates strongly againstliberalism, and especially its individualism .



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 ==[Biography  edit ] == MacIntyre has enjoyed his BA at Queen Mary College of the University of London and holds a Master Degree from the University of Manchester . In 1951 he began teaching at the University of Manchester. He has also worked in Britain at the University of Leeds, the University of Essex and the University of Oxford . In 1969 he moved to the United States. He has held the following academic positions:
 * 1 Biography
 * 2 Philosophy
 * 2.1 Marxism
 * 2.2 Virtue Ethics
 * 2.3 critic of liberalism
 * 3   List of works

He also has been a visiting professor at Princeton University, and he has been president of the American Philosophical Association . In April 2005 he was elected member of the American Philosophical Society .
 * Professor of History and Ideas, Brandeis University (1969 or 1970)
 * Dean of the College of Arts and Professor of Philosophy, Boston University (1972)
 * Henry Luce Professor, Wellesley College (1980)
 * W. Alton Jones Professor, Vanderbilt University (1982)
 * Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame (1985)
 * Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University (1985)
 * Visiting scholar, Whitney Humanities Center , Yale University (1988).
 * McMahon Hank Professor of Philosophy, Notre Dame (1989)
 * Arts & Sciences Professor of Philosophy, Duke University (1995-1997),
 * Rev. John A. O'Brien Senior Research Professor, University of Notre Dame (2000 to 2006).

He has been married three times. From 1953 to 1963 he was married to Ann Peri, with whom he had two daughters. From 1963 to 1977 he was married to Susan Willans, with whom he had a son and a daughter. Since 1977 he is married to philosopher Lynn Joy. ==[Philosophy  edit ] == ===<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[Marxism  edit <span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] === <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14px;">MacIntyre's first book was Marxism: An Interpretation (1953) in which he stated that he both Marxist and Christian was. Important in these early Marxist period, the article Notes from the Moral Wilderness where he struggles with Stalinism, which he is convinced that it is unacceptable, but on the other hand argues that the liberal tradition has no conclusive alternative. <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-1" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[1] This rejection and arguments against liberalism will continue to play an ongoing role in MacIntyre's philosophy.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14px;">In addition, it is also "The Theses on Feuerbach: A Road Not Taken" is important. In it, he argues that Karl Marx in his later economic stage could not reconcile with some crucial insights from his earlier philosophical work. The Marx MacIntyre therefore considers crucial, not Marx the economist, but Marx the philosopher blame directed at Marx's economic views or later Marxism or criticizing the failure of communist regimes are therefore largely irrelevant whether not reject Marx's philosophy. <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-2" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[2] Later, in 1968, when a revised edition of this work released under a title Marxism and Christianity, it is clear to him that he is not a Marxist or Christian is more. ===<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);"><span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[Virtue  Ethics <span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">edit <span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">]  === <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14px;">By the time he had left Marxism behind, he published perhaps his most famous work After Virtue (1981). Here he puts a critical set on the project of the Enlightenment which fails in his rational justification for ethics to formulate. This is for instance well reflected in the moralism of Friedrich Nietzsche . While doing so, he does not want to reject the whole Enlightenment, because he is still positive for certain elements of it. <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-3" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[3]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14px;">By reading the work of Thomas Kuhn and Imre Lakatos on the philosophy of science and epistemology came to the conclusion that some philosophical problems could only be solved by a radical change of perspective. <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-4" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[4] The problem of the modern project of ethics was as MacIntyre in the fact that morality would justify apart from any context in which it makes sense. Context can only be given to him according to a teleological view of man, which distinguishes between what people are and how people might be if they were to realize their moral goals. He also relies on the classical teleological tradition of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas . <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-5" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[5] This is for instance strongly forward in Whose Justice? ''? Which Rationality (1988), Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (1990) andDependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues'' (1999).

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14px;">MacIntyre This was, therefore one of the main modern defenders of virtue ethics . As stated earlier, he argues that morality has to do with the correct orientation of the man on his goal to lead as the "good life". MacIntyre wants to show that the right judgment comes from genuinely virtuous character of a person. A good person are therefore has nothing to do with the following the right formal rules. The important thing is the right thing to do in actual practice, rather than follow the practice independent duty ( ethics ) or observe the consequences ( consequentialism ). A virtue defines MacIntyre as "an acquired human quality the possession and exercise or-which Tends to enable us to Achieve Those goods-which are internal to practices and the lack of-which effectively Prevents us from Achieving any Such goods." <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-6" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[6] This " goods-which are internal to practices, "he means those matters that can only be obtained within a particular practice, as opposed to money or prestige - external goods - which can be obtained on an infinite number of different ways. ===<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);"><span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[Critic  of liberalism <span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">edit <span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">]  === <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14px;">MacIntyre formulates his work several criticisms of liberalism. About what this liberalism precisely entails, he writes the following: <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:inherit;">''"Liberalism, as I have Understood it in this book, does of course Appear in contemporary debates in a number of guises and in so doing is successful or at in preempting the debate by reformulating Quarrels and conflicts with liberalism, so thatthey Appear to Have Become debates within liberalism, putting in question this or particual That set of attitudes or policies, but not the fundamental tenets of liberalism with respect to Individuals and the expression of Their preferences. So so-called conservatism and so-called radicalism thesis in contemporary guises are in general mere stalking-horses for liberalism:. the contemporary debates within modern political systems are almost Exclusively between conservative liberals, liberal liberals and radical liberals There is little place in political Such systems for the criticism of the system itself, that is, for putting liberalism into question. "'' <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-7" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[7] <p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14px;">Three main criticisms directed at liberalism can be formulated as follows <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-8" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[8] :

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14px;">In a later lecture, Patriotism Is a Virtue? (1984), he also claims that the survival of a state depends on the willingness of some people to risk their lives for the rest. However, according to MacIntyre just an element that can not be comprehended from the individualism of liberalism. <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-9" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[9]
 * 1) Liberalism means that unions need to fit into the capitalist system and in parliamentary politics. However, this just undermines the importance of labor and the workers, and reduces them to a mere instrument within the capitalist system.
 * 2) Liberalism is a political elite and excludes the majority of the population right to participate in politics.
 * 3) Liberalism summarizes the political community and the state merely as a means to meet the individual needs of the citizens, but therefore it never goes beyond this individualism and has no regard for the common good.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14px;">He criticizes liberalism, however, does not mean that he is conservative is a label that he strongly denies. <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-10" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[10] Also, this does not mean that he is against the free market is. He is just in favor of the free market, but argues that contemporary liberalism fails to create a free market on a larger scale than that of relatively small communities. The greatest danger of capitalism, however, according to MacIntyre, she teaches people not to take that which they deserve, just as much as they can. The danger, in other words in pleonexia : the vice of increasingly want the negative infinity. <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-11" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[11]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14px;">Contemporary nations show themselves as defenders of capitalism, liberalism and individualism. That in a democratic life, according to MacIntyre is not true, but only appearance. In fact we live in anoligarchy is doing uitschijnen if they were a democracy. <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-12" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[12] It seems that we as free citizens can choose fully who should represent us, but in reality we have to choose between tightly-defined alternatives as defined by the elite themselves in fact all variants of liberalism: even critical positions are eventually reversed opposite to liberalism positions within this liberalism itself. In this way he also denies the label communitarianism for himself, despite the fact that he is anti-individualist and emphasizes the common good, because he is convinced that communitarianism is not an alternative to liberalism, but itself a form of liberalism. <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-13" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[13]

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.3999996185303px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:14px;">Another criticism MacIntyre delivers on the modern nation-state is that it organizes its political element at too high a level. Good politics need to be situated on a small scale, so that everyone can be heard and they can assess each other's character. Contemporary politics succeeds, however, not entirely there. He therefore argues for what he calls "politics of the local community" (politics of the local community). These small communities, however, have to constantly defend and rebel against the capitalist free market and liberal nation-states because they are just constructed so that they bring down these local politics. <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-14" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[14] ==List of works <span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;font-family:sans-serif;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">[  edit <span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="color:rgb(85,85,85);">] ==
 * 1953. Marxism: An Interpretation
 * 1955. New Essays in Philosophical Theology
 * 1958. The Unconscious: A Conceptual Analysis
 * 1959. Difficulties in Christian Belief
 * 1965. Hume's Ethical Writings
 * 1966. A short history of ethics: a history of moral philosophy from the Homeric Age to the twentieth century
 * 1967. Secularization and Moral Change. The Riddell Memorial Lectures
 * 1969. The Religious Significance of Atheism (with Paul Ricoeur )
 * 1970. Herbert Marcuse: An Exposition and a Polemic
 * 1970. Marcuse
 * 1971. Against the Self-Images of the Age: Essays on Ideology and Philosophy
 * 1981. After Virtue
 * Kierkegaard 2002. After Macintyre: Essays on Freedom, Narrative, and Virtue (Anthony Rudd and John Davenport).
 * 1988. Whose Justice? Which Rationality?
 * 1990. Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry. The Gifford Lectures
 * 1990. First Principles Final Ends, and Contemporary Philosophical Issues
 * 1995. Marxism and Christianity
 * 1998. The MacIntyre Reader
 * 1999. Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues
 * 2005. Edith Stein : A Philosophical Prologue, 1913-1922
 * 2006. The Tasks of Philosophy: Selected Essays, Volume 1
 * 2006. Ethics and Politics: Selected Essays, Volume 2
 * 2006. The End of Education: The Fragmentation of the American University
 * 2008 Alasdair MacIntyre's Early Marxist Writings: Essays and Articles 1953-1974
 * 2009. God, philosophy, universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition
 * 2009. Living Ethics