[HN Gopher] Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre
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Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre
Author : danielam
Score : 122 points
Date : 2025-05-23 11:37 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wordonfire.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wordonfire.org)
| sisoes wrote:
| 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_.
| dharmatech wrote:
| What would you consider yourself now, spiritually, if not
| Catholic?
| radiorental wrote:
| To paraphrase Ricky Jervias (and probably Richard Dawkins
| before him)...
|
| He just believes in one fewer gods now.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SGOGH5-SCA
| sisoes wrote:
| Eastern Orthodox Christian. _After Virtue_ is not a
| specifically Roman Catholic work, even though MacIntyre
| started slowly agree with its Aristotelian ethical system,
| and I still recommend the book to anyone willing to put in
| the work to understand it.
| dharmatech wrote:
| Thank you brother
| gundmc wrote:
| 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.
| gjm11 wrote:
| Now I want to know whose work McIntyre described as "the
| philosophical equivalent of _Vogue_ ".
| neel_k wrote:
| Richard Rorty, whose humanism and love of democracy MacIntyre
| despised.
|
| Over the course of his career, MacIntyre went from an extreme
| left Marxist to an extreme right Thomist, and the only constant
| was his hatred of liberalism. He really couldn't stand the idea
| that people could believe in rationalism, feel the moral force
| of individual rights, or make purpose and meaning for
| themselves, all without appealing to an authoritarian source of
| control.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > [...] _all without appealing to an authoritarian source of
| control._
|
| Well that was partly what _After Virtue_ was about: arguing
| it wasn 't possible to have an objective moral system without
| the supernatural.
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Virtue
|
| And he's not the only one to hold this view (many atheists do
| as well):
|
| * https://global.oup.com/academic/product/atheist-
| overreach-97...
|
| You're left with either Nietzsche's arbitrary will, or
| virtues (a la Aristotle). For the latter, MacIntyre attempted
| to develop a system of morality (? ethics?) based on human
| biology:
|
| * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/655623.Dependent_Ration
| a...
|
| Once can certainly tell oneself that there is a certain
| purpose or meaning to one's life, but if you're a
| materialist, then (the argument goes (AIUI)) it's not true.
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is-ought_problem
|
| The arrangement of atoms is arbitrary and without meaning,
| and to call some arrangement(s) "good" or "bad" or better /
| worse is a value judgement that is just as arbitrary and
| meaningless.
| Veen wrote:
| 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.
| lapcat wrote:
| > 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 than
| MacIntyre's, ranging from "Philosophy and the Mirror of
| Nature" to "Achieving Our Country", addressing vastly
| different subjects and audiences.
| bpshaver wrote:
| 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/978069121
| 7529/wh...
| vehemenz wrote:
| This is an odd take. Rorty is one of the major philosophers
| of the 20th century. MacIntyre is more obscure, probably
| unknown to plenty of academic philosophers.
| kendallgclark wrote:
| He didn't write as if he hated liberalism. Maybe he did. But
| in his work you get deep, principled critique from the basis
| of epistemology and selfhood.
|
| Lenin wrote like someone who hates liberalism. Stephen Miller
| gives that vibe from the right, though I doubt he can write
| anything coherent at all.
| gjm11 wrote:
| Excellent -- thanks! Do you know where/when he said it?
| cess11 wrote:
| I disagree with MacIntyre about a lot, both in theology and
| political philosophy, but I respect him for having tried to
| engage with both Nietzsche and the french philosophers heavily
| influenced by him as well as sticking by his egalitarian ethics
| even after the successful revolt of Reagan and the yuppies.
|
| 'When asked in 1996 what values he retained from his Marxist
| days, MacIntyre answered, "I would still like to see every rich
| person hanged from the nearest lamp post."'
| abcd_f wrote:
| > _every rich person hanged from the nearest lamp post_
|
| As the joke from the 00s went - in other news, Cisco has become
| today the first company to close its doors because all its
| employees cashed out their stock options and quit.
|
| That is, hanging rich persons from the lamp posts is probably
| not the maxim that would resonate well on the HN :)
| cess11 wrote:
| On average I think it has changed some in later years. I
| don't see as much eugenics and far-right apologia as I used
| to.
| abcd_f wrote:
| You think the majority of the HN is now in favor of hanging
| the rich from the street poles?
| Boogie_Man wrote:
| I certainly see a through line between Chesterton and After
| Virtue. As a certified Heretics Enjoyer I'm sold.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alasdair_MacIntyre
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Virtue
| digiconfucius wrote:
| After Virtue was one of my favorite books, and it helped me get
| started learning about the history of ideas. I knew he was
| getting older, but I'm saddened to see him pass. In college, I
| had hoped that I could meet him one day. Rest in peace.
| AquinasCoder wrote:
| I recommend some of his other works: Whose Justice, Whose
| Rationality and Dependent Rational Animals.
|
| It's rewarding to seem him attempt a reconciliation between some
| modern epistemologies and Augustinian Thomism. I'm not sure he
| really pulls it off but his stature as a thinker in moral
| philosophy is undeniable.
| coolKid721 wrote:
| Also his very late work, ethics in the conflicts of modernity
| is often looked over for his older ones but is probably my
| favorite.
| cm2012 wrote:
| "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 fit a narrative
| feels like moral relativism in disguise.
|
| I get that modern ethics can feel fragmented, but the answer
| isn't to retreat into tribalism or pretend reason can't give us
| shared values across cultures.
|
| Just because some people are bad at finding moral clarity doesn't
| mean it's impossible or meaningless.
| varunneal wrote:
| 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?
| cm2012 wrote:
| 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."
| intuitionist wrote:
| 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.
| Isamu wrote:
| Often people are justifying moral systems that make sense
| overall but contain individual values that are grandfathered
| in, but maybe don't make as much sense as the rest. There is a
| resistance to the kind of clarity that could force you to
| question some traditional values. Slavery is a good example to
| think about.
| AquinasCoder wrote:
| I think that's why I find his later works more compelling,
| particularly "Dependent Rational Animals," in which he grounds
| traditions in human telos. There are aims or goods which are
| common and transcend social constructs. After Virtue suffers
| from a great premise but doesn't quite stick the landing.
| Aidevah wrote:
| > _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...
| cm2012 wrote:
| Yes, for instance, I think its fine if people who support
| hurting other innocent people are marginalized.
| defen wrote:
| That doesn't actually solve the problem, it simply moves
| the debate into what constitutes innocence and hurting.
| bpshaver wrote:
| > 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.
| antithesizer wrote:
| 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.
| zoogeny wrote:
| 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.
| senderista wrote:
| Most people never introspect their own moral beliefs enough
| to even consider their validity.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| 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
| qhiliq wrote:
| The MacIntyre piece I read first and got the most from is "Hegel
| on Faces and Skulls". It explains Hegel's critique of physiognomy
| and phrenology, which is about what we can and cannot learn about
| someone by looking at them. Said another way, the difference
| between _expressions_ and physical traits. I think about it a lot
| whenever I see claims made about facial recognition systems, and
| in my day job working on motion capture.
| lukeasrodgers wrote:
| Yes, this is still the most persuasive and concise argument
| I've encountered against a whole host of forms of biological
| reductionism, including those based on modern fmri techniques.
| antithesizer wrote:
| "Being asked to die for the nation state is like being asked to
| die for the telephone company."
|
| -Alasdair MacIntyre
|
| RIP
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