Alasdair MacIntyre
contemporaryThomistic Aristotelianismb. 1929
Alasdair MacIntyre (born 1929) is a Scottish-American moral and political philosopher best known for his critique of Enlightenment moral philosophy and his revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics. His landmark work After Virtue (1981) argued that modern moral discourse is incoherent, having lost the teleological framework within which moral concepts originally made sense. A convert to Catholicism, he has increasingly aligned with Thomistic Aristotelianism as the tradition best equipped to resolve contemporary moral crisis.
Notable Achievements
1
Authored After Virtue (1981), reigniting virtue ethics as a serious alternative to deontology and consequentialism
2
Developed the concept of tradition-constituted rationality, arguing that rational inquiry is always embedded in a living tradition
3
Critiqued the atomistic, rights-based liberal self as historically and philosophically untenable
4
Argued that emotivism has become the dominant but unacknowledged moral language of modernity
5
Engaged seriously with non-Western traditions, including comparative work on Confucian thinkers such as Xunzi and Mencius