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Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre

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Re: Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre

#41

Post by Aidevah »

cm2012 wrote: post #26

“After Virtue” annoys me because it basically argues that morality only makes sense within cultural traditions, as if we’re all just trapped in our local narratives with no access to universal truths. MacIntyre romanticizes ancient communities and traditions, but ignores the fact that plenty of those upheld horrifying practices—like slavery, misogyny, or human sacrifice—and calling those ‘virtuous’ just because they…

> Universalism: that is the intellectual realm abutting utopianism and ethnocentrism. "There are universal values, and they happen to be mine," was Stanley Hoffman’s delightful definition of the latter. Like utopianism and ethnocentrism, universalism normalizes, excludes, and shouts down. If “universal” does not mean universally accepted, then it means nothing. Those who do not accept must therefore at least be marginalized, and if possible stigmatized.

-- Richard Taruskin [1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/10/arts/the-new-seasonclassi...

Re: Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre

#42

Post by bpshaver »

cm2012 wrote: post #26

“After Virtue” annoys me because it basically argues that morality only makes sense within cultural traditions, as if we’re all just trapped in our local narratives with no access to universal truths. MacIntyre romanticizes ancient communities and traditions, but ignores the fact that plenty of those upheld horrifying practices—like slavery, misogyny, or human sacrifice—and calling those ‘virtuous’ just because they…

> MacIntyre romanticizes ancient communities and traditions, but ignores the fact that plenty of those upheld horrifying practices

What makes you think that? A huge part of After Virtue (basically the whole part, after the initial diagnosis of where we are now and how we got here) is about how to construct and understand communities that might provide a shared idea of human good without simply going back to an Athenian idea of what that looks like. In fact if I were to summarize the book in a nutshell I would argue its an attempt to rehabilitate Aristotelian ethics without simply accepting Aristotle's own moral percepts.

Re: Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre

#43

Post by bpshaver »

lapcat wrote: post #31
Veen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but 20 years after Rorty's death, he's largely forgotten. I think it unlikely the same will be true of MacIntyre two-decades hence.

> Perhaps, but 20 years after Rorty's death, he's largely forgotten. No, he's not. Not at all. Rorty has been and always will be more important, and more famous, than MacIntyre. This is not to insult MacIntyre, who was important within philosophical circles but not so much in the general public, except perhaps within religious groups, with which I'm not well acquainted. Rorty's breadth of influence was also greater t…

Not to mention the huge posthumous bump that Rorty got for being labeled "The Philosopher who predicted Trump." There was even a new collection of his essays out in 2022 [0].

[0] https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691217529/wh...

Re: Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre

#44

Post by antithesizer »

cm2012 wrote: post #26

“After Virtue” annoys me because it basically argues that morality only makes sense within cultural traditions, as if we’re all just trapped in our local narratives with no access to universal truths. MacIntyre romanticizes ancient communities and traditions, but ignores the fact that plenty of those upheld horrifying practices—like slavery, misogyny, or human sacrifice—and calling those ‘virtuous’ just because they…

Different cultures have a lot in common and so do their morals. Culture is not arbitrary; it always has a grounding in universal human needs and features as well as somewhat variable factors such as environment.

Re: Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre

#45

Post by cm2012 »

Aidevah wrote: post #41
cm2012 wrote: post #26

“After Virtue” annoys me because it basically argues that morality only makes sense within cultural traditions, as if we’re all just trapped in our local narratives with no access to universal truths. MacIntyre romanticizes ancient communities and traditions, but ignores the fact that plenty of those upheld horrifying practices—like slavery, misogyny, or human sacrifice—and calling those ‘virtuous’ just because they…

> Universalism: that is the intellectual realm abutting utopianism and ethnocentrism. "There are universal values, and they happen to be mine," was Stanley Hoffman’s delightful definition of the latter. Like utopianism and ethnocentrism, universalism normalizes, excludes, and shouts down. If “universal” does not mean universally accepted, then it means nothing. Those who do not accept must therefore at least be margi…

Yes, for instance, I think its fine if people who support hurting other innocent people are marginalized.

Re: Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre

#46

Post by zoogeny »

cm2012 wrote: post #26

“After Virtue” annoys me because it basically argues that morality only makes sense within cultural traditions, as if we’re all just trapped in our local narratives with no access to universal truths. MacIntyre romanticizes ancient communities and traditions, but ignores the fact that plenty of those upheld horrifying practices—like slavery, misogyny, or human sacrifice—and calling those ‘virtuous’ just because they…

I think there is a difference between there being a universal moral Truth (ontological) vs. a particular individuals ability to know that universal (epistemological). The former doesn't necessarily imply the latter. Rejecting the latter (the ability to know) doesn't require rejecting the former (the universal).

If one considers that these two are decoupled, it poses a question: how could one live in alignment to a universal truth that one cannot know. It makes me wonder, can we find meaning without certainty.

Even in this age of the rejection of religious dogma, I tend to notice that people still want to cling to certainty. They are certain there is no morality (nihilism) or they are certain that morality can be found either in the study of nature (through empiricism) or reason (through rationalism).

I hardly ever see anyone suggest that they humbly do not know.

Re: Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre

#47

Post by defen »

cm2012 wrote: post #45
Aidevah wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Universalism: that is the intellectual realm abutting utopianism and ethnocentrism. "There are universal values, and they happen to be mine," was Stanley Hoffman’s delightful definition of the latter. Like utopianism and ethnocentrism, universalism normalizes, excludes, and shouts down. If “universal” does not mean universally accepted, then it means nothing. Those who do not accept must therefore at least be margi…

Yes, for instance, I think its fine if people who support hurting other innocent people are marginalized.

That doesn't actually solve the problem, it simply moves the debate into what constitutes innocence and hurting.

Re: Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre

#48

Post by intuitionist »

cm2012 wrote: post #32
varunneal wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can reason give us shared values across cultures? Why do you suppose your moral clarity was generated from your brain and not your gut?

That's what the field of philosophy is about. I think, for instance, utilitarianism makes a lot more sense than "follow whatever your birth community historically does."

I dunno. Utilitarianism sounds nice on the surface—how can you be against the greatest good for the greatest number?—but it’s pretty under-specified (hedonic or preference? act or rule? do you discount future beings’ utils, and at what rate?) and if you take any particular specification seriously you get moral claims that are wildly counterintuitive, like “insect suffering is orders of magnitude more important than heart disease in humans” or “there may be quadrillions of sentient beings in the far future, and making their lives 1% better is a better use of resources than eradicating malaria now” or “it’s morally justified to steal billions of dollars of other people’s money to give to pandemic prevention and AI safety.” And maybe these are correct claims, but they definitely don’t align with many people’s moral intuitions, and it’d be a tall task to convince those people.

Re: Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre

#49

Post by gundmc »

sisoes wrote: post #4

I am not Roman Catholic anymore, but I read After Virtue shortly after I graduated from college and it fundamentally changed my moral worldview for the better. I owe him a great debt. Requiescat in pace .

I read After Virtue while in college and suffering something of an existential crisis. That book really challenged me to shift my thinking on purpose and meaning. It holds great value to me on a personal level. Thank you, Professor MacIntyre.

Re: Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre

#50

Post by lo_zamoyski »

cm2012 wrote: post #26

“After Virtue” annoys me because it basically argues that morality only makes sense within cultural traditions, as if we’re all just trapped in our local narratives with no access to universal truths. MacIntyre romanticizes ancient communities and traditions, but ignores the fact that plenty of those upheld horrifying practices—like slavery, misogyny, or human sacrifice—and calling those ‘virtuous’ just because they…

I am very confused by these claims, because MacIntyre was exactly opposed to relativism, and emotivism, which he saw as characteristic of the hollow shell of modern morality [0]. He acknowledges Nietzsche's criticism of the farce of Enlightenment morals. He appealed to telos as the objective basis for ethics and morality and in that book advocated for return to Aristote.

Perhaps you misunderstand what culture is. It isn't some kind of fiction we lay on top of reality that gets in the way of reality. It is a shared language of a people about reality and one that is not static, but hopefully developing, but at the very least changing. Science is itself a part of culture. You are born into a culture, which can be anything form pretty good to downright lousy, and the "dialogue" of this culture of a people with reality, and other cultures, moves the development of this culture.

Think of all the things you have learned in the scope of science. That aggregate of learning is culture. The presuppositions that science rests on is culture. This doesn't contradict the possibility of knowing the universal. Rather, it is through the cultural that you come to know the universal and through which you are better prepared to know it. We benefit from thousands of years of cultural dialogue. We cannot attain a very high understanding of reality without immersing ourselves in this dialogue of cultures spanning human history.

(Incidentally, as MacIntyre was a Catholic convert, one thing the Catholic Church makes possible is the existence of both the particularity of ethnos and the universality of the Church; "catholic" means "universal". A multiplicity of cultures sharing in the universal, avoiding both cultural parochialism and an alienated cosmopolitanism.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Virtue

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