Philosopher Alasdair Macintyre was a wandering mind in search of the good

He was about virtuous life within a close community – although he denied being a ‘community thinker’. As it was about social involvement, but he had renounced Marxism.

The Scottish philosopher Alasdair Macintyre, who died on 21 May at the age of 96, was certainly one of the most influential moral philosophers of the late twentieth century, also under conservative intellectuals in the Netherlands.

This was mainly due to his much -discussed book After Virtue (1981), a classic who only recently received a Dutch translation. According to Macintyre, European thinking about ethics had already lost the realization at the end of the Middle Ages that doing good is embedded in a community, with traditional practices that give meaning to life. Instead, people went to seek the good in the individual, who should find a moral foundation in themselves. The result was endless kisse bisses between philosophers about the nature of the good. Was that based on feelings, or on rational insights?

How is it going? In After Virtue Grab Macintyre far back, on the virtue ethics of Aristotle. Doing good is not about following rules or feelings, but about human virtues, developed in the practices of a community. Macintyre, written, written, gave the reputation of a communitarist, who primarily sees the individual as a member of a community and who is a critic of liberalism, which focuses on the autonomous individual.

Historical Perspectives

Outside the university, his criticism of liberal society found great resonance, partly due to the colorful but also coarse brush with which he outlined philosophical and historical perspectives. Within the university, where stricter analytical philosophy set the tone, he became more and more isolated.

Macintyre was born in 1929 in Glasgow as a child of two doctors, who soon moved to London with the family. In 1949 he achieved a Bachelor of Classical Languages, followed by Master Philosophy at the universities of Manchester and Oxford. He then worked as a teacher at various English universities.

His many relocations reflected his wandering spirit and social compassion. In the 1950s he joined the Anglican church and became a member of the Communist Party, where he was attracted by revolutionary Trotskyism. In the sixties he grew into a prominent member of the British New Left and became atheist.

Soon his dissatisfaction with Marxism grew, even though he remained critical of capitalism that upholsteres communities and undermines virtues. The moral bankruptcy of Communism came to light in the stink of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. His disappointment described Macintyre in a series of articles with the title Notes from the moral desert. He was also critical of the work of the celebrated Herbert Marcuse, with the rightful question: was it true what Marcuse wrote (his answer: largely not).

Disgusting deeds

Not that academic ethics had something better to offer. Macintyre opposed the so -called utilism, which argues that the good is what is best for the largest number of people. Such a calculation allows disgusting acts, he thought, such as throwing an atomic bomb. But also the idea of ​​Kant that morality consists of following universal rules did not appeal to him: too abstract.

In 1969 Macintyre left for the United States, where he finally said goodbye to Marxism. He kept hopping from university to university until he finally found his place at the Catholic Notre Dame University in Indiana.

In terms of content, he had now come home. He embraced the virtue theory of Aristotle: people discover the good in joint practices that have grown historically. Of course we can’t just transposen the old Greek virtues to the present time, says Macintyre. They must be ‘transformed’ into virtues that match our practices. A difficult project, because according to him, modern society has lost the sense of community.

Just like in his Marxist phase, he did not stand still for long. After Aristotle, he discovered the revised virtue of medieval theologian Thomas van Aquino, which he found even better than the Greek original. What led him to convert to Catholicism.

Concrete practice

Macintyre continued to publish a lot. In Whose Justice? Which rationality? (1988) He again radicalized his position. Concepts such as justice and rationality are not universal, but only under a concrete social and historical practice. That was fierce criticism from colleagues who thought he was opening the door for relativism and collective coercion. The American philosopher Hilary Putnam blamed Macintyre that he misunderstands the essence of liberal democracies: that there must always be room for deviating voices that denounce the dominant way of doing a community.

In the preface of the third edition of After Virtue Macintyre parried that criticism. He had never been a communitarist, he wrote, because indeed, communities can also be immoral. He also denied being a relativist. Following Thomas van Aquino, he gave in one of his later books, Dependent Rational Animals. Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (1999), A metaphysical substantiation of his notion of the good life.

How feasible is Macintyre’s project? The big question of his work remains how it is possible to transcend the standards of one’s own community to criticize them – as he himself does with his criticism of liberal individualism.

According to him, the derailed modern culture is only easy to understand – and correcting – from the position of Aristotle. When there was still a community with practices in which virtues were useful. That nostalgic desire colored his thinking and also gives it, now that liberalism is under fire and brutal power seems to rule the world again, a melancholic character.

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