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Tradition Based Moral Enquiry

Alan Thomas

in Value and Context: The Nature of Moral and Political Knowledge

This chapter explains how a contextualist can argue for rationality both within a tradition of moral enquiry and, equally importantly, across such traditions. An essential part of the latter task is ... More

This chapter explains how a contextualist can argue for rationality both within a tradition of moral enquiry and, equally importantly, across such traditions. An essential part of the latter task is reiterating why, in some cases, an apparent challenge to our ethical outlook does not constitute a challenge at all. The work of Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor are considered, in order to argue that in so far as their tradition-based models of moral reasoning are plausible, they instantiate contextualism.Less

Companionship and Community

Peter Dula

in Cavell, Companionship, and Christian Theology

This chapter compares Stanley Cavell's moral philosophy to Alasdair MacIntyre's influential variety of communitarianism. It argues that Cavell shares with MacIntyre a vigorous critique of mid‐century ... More

This chapter compares Stanley Cavell's moral philosophy to Alasdair MacIntyre's influential variety of communitarianism. It argues that Cavell shares with MacIntyre a vigorous critique of mid‐century orthodoxies, such as emotivism, utilitarianism, and quandary ethics. Yet Cavell has little use for communitarian keywords such as narrative, tradition, and community. MacIntyre's misreading of Henry James's Portrait of a Lady provides an instructive example of how one sort of overemphasis on community serves to obscure individual differences which should be allowed to complicate community‐centered approaches.Less

Translation, Conversation, or Hospitality?: Approaches to Theological Reasons in Public Deliberation

Luke Bretherton

in Religious Voices in Public Places

Within Western liberal democracies a variety of answers are given to the question of how, within a polity wherein a plurality of different visions of the good life coexist, some form of common life ... More

Within Western liberal democracies a variety of answers are given to the question of how, within a polity wherein a plurality of different visions of the good life coexist, some form of common life is to be forged. This chapter outlines three of these answers and situates them within wider philosophical and theological debates about the role of religious reasons in public political deliberation. The first approach assessed is the translation model. The work of John Rawls is assessed as a paradigmatic example of such an approach. An alternative to the translation model is the conversation model. The emphasis in this model is on the attempt to take seriously the actual beliefs and practices of particular traditions as the basis for common deliberation. The work of Jeffrey Stout and Alasdair MacIntyre are discussed as examples of this approach. It is argued that they attempt to develop an account of how diverse and incommensurable moral traditions can deliberate about common action without having to find some agnostic or neutral language into which all ‘thick’ language must be translated. The third approach outlined is the hospitality model. While there is much overlap with the conversation model, the hospitality model represents a specifically Christian theological approach to determining common action between diverse traditions. Like the conversation model, the hospitality model seeks to give an account of how different traditions can engage directly with each other. But its emphasis is on common public action, rather than conversation or dialogue. The article ends with a comparative analysis of all three models.Less

Introduction: Theoretical Invariance and Social Variance

A. Raghuramaraju

in Modernity in Indian Social Theory

In India, philosophers have not attempted to overcome the existing limitation between social theory and social philosophy. Surprisingly, many of them are not even aware of this as a philosophical ... More

In India, philosophers have not attempted to overcome the existing limitation between social theory and social philosophy. Surprisingly, many of them are not even aware of this as a philosophical issue. This explains why there is a social variance between India and the West. Like the West, Indian society is becoming modern, but modernity in India has to coexist with the pre-modern. This introduction examines the uniqueness of Rene Descartes's method and presents a different perspective on modernity. It considers the intermediate attempts to overcome solipsism into three major movements, each constituting a distinct stage in the movement of ideas. It also considers the views of Alasdair MacIntyre on modernity and tradition in the West.Less

Who's Responsible?

Nancey Murphy and Warren S. Brown

in Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?: Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and Free Will

This chapter deals with a central theme of the book: a philosophical analysis of the concept of morally responsible action. The account of moral agency worked out by Alasdair MacIntyre is utilized. ... More

This chapter deals with a central theme of the book: a philosophical analysis of the concept of morally responsible action. The account of moral agency worked out by Alasdair MacIntyre is utilized. In this account, morally responsible action depends (initially) on the ability to evaluate that which moves one to act in light of a concept of the good. The cognitive prerequisites for such action would include a sense of self, a narrative memory, the ability to run behavioral scenarios and predict their outcome, the ability to represent the future, and high-order symbolic language. In light of this, the problem of weakness of will and the meaning of free will are discussed.Less

 Radical Evil and the Narration of Goods

John Wall

in Moral Creativity: Paul Ricoeur and the Poetics of Possibility

The simplest (but by no means the only) form in which moral life itself requires creativity lies in the self’s teleological narration, alongside others, of the meaning of biological, social, and ... More

The simplest (but by no means the only) form in which moral life itself requires creativity lies in the self’s teleological narration, alongside others, of the meaning of biological, social, and historical goods. Aristotle and contemporary Aristotelians like Alasdair MacIntyre and Stanley Hauerwas show how moral life depends on traditional and social narratives, but they separate the activities of poetics and ethical phronesis and so reduce ethical narrative to something passively received instead of also actively created. Martha Nussbaum draws a closer relation of ethics and poetics through an Aristotelian conception of moral tragedy, but subordinates poetics to an instrumental means toward otherwise fixed moral norms. Paul Ricoeur shows that the narration of goods rests on a poetics of the will in which the self confronts its own freely chosen radical evil by affirming, still more primordially, its passive-active capability or “gift” for narrating the good in the first place. Beyond Ricoeur, a deeper Greek and Aristotelian sense for historical moral tragedy can be introduced into such moral narration by first defining radical evil as the tragic tension of freedom and finitude, and second affirming a still more primordial human capability for rendering this tension productive of ever more radically inclusive historical narration.Less

Projecting the Enlightenment

Robert Wokler and Christopher Brooke

Bryan Garsten (ed.)

in Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment, and Their Legacies

This chapter retraces Alasdair MacIntyre's own construal of the Enlightenment Project's trajectory in order to show how his interpretation of an intellectual tradition depends above all on his ... More

This chapter retraces Alasdair MacIntyre's own construal of the Enlightenment Project's trajectory in order to show how his interpretation of an intellectual tradition depends above all on his assessment of its impact. It argues that MacIntyre's Enlightenment Project is largely unreconstructed, unredeemed, and undiminished in its failure, even after substantial embellishment. His three principal works comprise an extraordinary indictment of the theoretical and practical legacy of eighteenth-century philosophy. His account projects the Enlightenment's implications and influence as they stem from its aims. He holds it to blame for some of the most sinister aspects of a morally vacuous civilization, cursed by the malediction of unlicenced Reason. His intellectual history of the period forms one of the mainsprings of his own philosophy.Less

Narrative and the Rationality of Mathematical Practice

David Corfield

Apostolos Doxiadis and Barry Mazur (eds)

in Circles Disturbed: The Interplay of Mathematics and Narrative

This chapter examines the rationality of mathematical practice in relation to narrative. It begins with a discussion of Alasdair MacIntyre's account of rational enquiry, Three Rival Versions of Moral ... More

This chapter examines the rationality of mathematical practice in relation to narrative. It begins with a discussion of Alasdair MacIntyre's account of rational enquiry, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, and how this might translate to scientific and mathematical enquiry. It then considers the telos of mathematical enquiry, along with rival claims to truth as the aim of mathematics. The chapter argues that to be fully rational, mathematicians must embrace narrative as a basic tool for understanding the nature of their discipline and research. It also calls for the partial validity of a pre-Enlightenment epistemology of mathematics as a craft whose advance is made possible only through a certain discipleship.Less

The Ethical as a ‘Stage’ of Existence: Either/Or and Radical Choice

C. Stephen Evans

in Kierkegaard's Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations

Though Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous authorship poses interpretive challenges, its ironical and humorous literary character does not make it impossible to develop from it an ethical theory. Readers of ... More

Though Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous authorship poses interpretive challenges, its ironical and humorous literary character does not make it impossible to develop from it an ethical theory. Readers of Kierkegaard must be wary of fashionable attempts to make Kierkegaard ‘postmodern’. They should avoid as well the temptation to understand the ethical life as a humanistic stance devoid of belief in God; Kierkegaard’s ethicists are actually pious believers who attend church regularly. Finally, Alasdair MacIntyre’s reading of Kierkegaard must also be resisted: Kierkegaard and the pseudonyms of Either/Or do not advocate a doctrine of radical choice, as MacIntyre claims. Instead, the three spheres or stages are ranked in the order that they are because the higher spheres realize the aims of the lower ones. The ethical life is not abandoned in one’s movement to the religious life; instead, it is fulfiled.Less

A Different Approach: Virtue Ethics

Rebecca Gordon

in Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States

This chapter explores an approach that allows us to understand how institutionalized state torture not only attacks individual and social bodies but also distorts the character of all those who make ... More

This chapter explores an approach that allows us to understand how institutionalized state torture not only attacks individual and social bodies but also distorts the character of all those who make torture possible. This view is based on the contemporary virtue ethics of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. The chapter explores how MacIntyre’s understanding of human practices illumines aspects of torture not addressed by consequentialist and deontological arguments alone. For MacIntyre, a practice is a “coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity.” The chapter details several other key concepts, including telos, virtue, and tradition, and addresses three main challenges to MacIntrye’s approach.Less

Contemporary Solutions to the Paradox and Their Problems

John Davenport

in Will as Commitment and Resolve: An Existential Account of Creativity, Love, Virtue, and Happiness

Beginning with two commentaries on Aristotle, this chapter focuses on themes in neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, including Alasdair MacIntyre's accounts of practices and ... More

Beginning with two commentaries on Aristotle, this chapter focuses on themes in neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, including Alasdair MacIntyre's accounts of practices and common goods. The evaluation of these theories, which shows that they support the existential conception of striving will, is aimed at resolving the paradox of eudaimonism, including ideas proposed by MacIntyre, John Cooper, Paula Gottlieb, and Gary Watson, and argues that none avoids the need to postulate projective motivation. This helps explain why the revival of virtue ethics has been unable to show how the goals we ought to pursue and the virtues required to sustain pursuit of them are fully traceable to (or explainable from) the telos of human psychology or the nature of human agency. This chapter argues that the same paradox arises in neo-Aristotelian accounts of friendship and MacIntyre's account of practices; for projective motivation plays a key role in both these phenomena. The views of Nancy Sherman, Karl Marx, John Rawls, Rosalind Hursthouse, David Brink, and Baruch Spinoza are also considered.Less

Nomad’s Progress: Isaiah Berlin Lecture

Lord Sutherland

in Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 131, 2004 Lectures

This lecture discusses the usefulness, the appropriateness, and the viability of the metaphor of pilgrimage, as it is applied in the post-twentieth century world to the search for moral and spiritual ... More

This lecture discusses the usefulness, the appropriateness, and the viability of the metaphor of pilgrimage, as it is applied in the post-twentieth century world to the search for moral and spiritual fulfilment. The lecture suggests some parallels with Isaiah Berlin's rejection of the central premise in utopian thought, where the idea of a perfect whole where all good things existed was coherent. It is also implied that there were parallels to some concerns in the recent work of Alasdair MacIntyre and Ernest Gellner; several themes that were central to their theses are identified.Less

Moral Particularism, Thomism and Traditions

ROBERT P. GEORGE

in In Defense of Natural Law

This chapter considers Alasdair MacIntyre’s critique, from a Thomistic-Aristotelian perspective, of the mainstream of the liberal tradition in moral and political philosophy in his important book ... More

This chapter considers Alasdair MacIntyre’s critique, from a Thomistic-Aristotelian perspective, of the mainstream of the liberal tradition in moral and political philosophy in his important book Whose Justice? Which Rationality? This chapter expresses concern on MacIntyre’s strong ‘particularism,’ (viz., his view of moral inquiry as not only ‘tradition-constitutive,’ but also ‘tradition-constituted’) which renders the idea of objective moral truth highly and unnecessarily problematic, and risks collapsing into a form of moral relativism. Certain modifications have been suggested of the view MacIntyre defends that would give ‘tradition’ its due moral analysis, yet avoid any strong relativist implications.Less

Introduction

Talbot Brewer

in The Retrieval of Ethics

This Introduction starts by discussing the purpose of looking at ethics in philosophy and examines the history of ethics in a wider context. Virtue ethics is mentioned in relation to Elizabeth ... More

This Introduction starts by discussing the purpose of looking at ethics in philosophy and examines the history of ethics in a wider context. Virtue ethics is mentioned in relation to Elizabeth Anscombe's ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ and Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue. These two works are discussed in detail. The Introduction goes on to outline the place virtue ethics has in contemporary philosophy. It then outlines the main concern of the book, which is to develop and extend some of the more radical themes sounded by Anscombe and MacIntyre and analyse them in a new light.Less

Vulnerability

John Barry

in The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability: Human Flourishing in a Climate-Changed, Carbon Constrained World

Vulnerability and associated concepts such as dependence, are relatively little-used terms within mainstream political theory. Self-consciously working within an eco-feminist perspective, this ... More

Vulnerability and associated concepts such as dependence, are relatively little-used terms within mainstream political theory. Self-consciously working within an eco-feminist perspective, this chapter indicates that issues of unsustainability have brought considerations of vulnerability centre stage. Another key concept outlined is ‘sequestration’ (taken from Giddens), denoting the deliberate ‘hiding away’ of ‘existentially troubling’ aspects of modern living, that remind us of our vulnerable and dependent natures. This chapter also discusses the work of MacIntyre on vulnerability, before turning to an analysis of the ‘limiting case’ of the cultural devastation experienced by the Crow nation in the nineteenth century, and what it teaches us about resilience and adaptability. The final section of this chapter offers a discussion of illness, death, and human flourishing. This chapter makes the case for a more explicit acknowledgement and integration of illness, disability, dependence, and death into our conceptualizations about a normal human life, and more than that, a full account of a flourishing human life requires it.Less

Explaining Wrongdoing

Mike W. Martin

in Meaningful Work: Rethinking Professional Ethics

Just as personal commitments shape the character of professionals, failures of personal commitment and character enter into understanding their wrongdoing. We can distinguish two types of ... More

Just as personal commitments shape the character of professionals, failures of personal commitment and character enter into understanding their wrongdoing. We can distinguish two types of explanations of wrongdoing. Character explanations appeal to features of persons, either general flaws or specific failings manifested in immoral acts. Social explanations, in contrast, appeal to outside structures and pressures that contribute to misconduct, including influences within professions, corporations, and the wider society. This chapter seeks to renew an appreciation of character explanations, distinguishes some of their main varieties, and shows how they complement rather than compete with social explanations. The opening section clarifies how character explanations carry explanatory meaning and why their reference to values does not render them suspect. The concluding section integrates character and social explanations within a virtue-ethics framework for understanding mixed motives in response to multiple social influences, drawing upon and recasting Alasdair MacIntyre's distinctions between internal and external goods and between public and private goods.Less

An Ethical Postlude

Jonathan D. Teubner

in Prayer after Augustine: A study in the development of the Latin tradition

‘An Ethical Postlude’ returns to reflect directly on an understanding of tradition that frames how Boethius and Benedict relate to Augustine vis-à-vis the theme of prayer. This final chapter reflects ... More

‘An Ethical Postlude’ returns to reflect directly on an understanding of tradition that frames how Boethius and Benedict relate to Augustine vis-à-vis the theme of prayer. This final chapter reflects on the kinematics of tradition, that is, on the actual motions qua motions of the act of tradition. This chapter engages the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and Jeffrey Stout, both of whom have offered challenges to religious ethicists to broaden their historical horizons. Through critical engagement with MacIntyre and Stout, this chapter presents a case for an historical approach to Christian existence which can still give rise to meaningful moral and ethical reflection without having to accept (consciously or unconsciously) a Hegelian metaphysics of history.Less

Critics of Modern Politics

Joshua Mauldin

in Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Modern Politics

This chapter sets up the central question of the project by examining three recent critics of modern politics. For historian Brad Gregory, the ills of modern society are traceable to the Protestant ... More

This chapter sets up the central question of the project by examining three recent critics of modern politics. For historian Brad Gregory, the ills of modern society are traceable to the Protestant Reformation, which destroyed the unified society that Catholicism once provided in Europe. For Alasdair MacIntyre, modern society lacks an account of the human good and thus of the virtues that help human beings achieve this good. Stanley Hauerwas agrees with MacIntyre about the hopelessness of liberal modernity, and suggests that the Church can provide an alternative to the barbarity of the wider society, bedeviled as it is by disagreement, distrust, and violence. For these critics it is the marginalization of religion that is the source of modernity’s ills. The remainder of the book will examine the works of prominent religious thinkers who reflected on the ethical life of modern society at a time when that viability was even more questionable than it is today.Less

The Perils and Promise of Tradition

Ross Kane

in Syncretism and Christian Tradition: Race and Revelation in the Study of Religious Mixture

This chapter contends that an adequate account of syncretism requires its pairing with the concept of tradition. Drawing from multiple contextualized encounters in the sixteenth century—from ... More

This chapter contends that an adequate account of syncretism requires its pairing with the concept of tradition. Drawing from multiple contextualized encounters in the sixteenth century—from Ethiopian and Portuguese Christians to Jesuit José Acosta and Andean peoples to Matteo Ricci and Confucian scholars—it portrays tradition as a moving continuity that is constantly syncretizing as traditions are handed on in new contexts. Syncretism and tradition, held together, balance the tension between cultural construction on the one hand and cultural continuity on the other. Traditions are not substance-like materials that remain the same over time, nor are their boundaries static. Rather, receivers interpret a tradition afresh, generating new perspectives and pushing it in unforeseen directions. The account of tradition is dialogical, drawing from examples in the encounters just listed, from Alasdair MacIntyre’s account of tradition—which is unduly defensive at times—and from Africanist historians’ careful treatment of the concept.Less