MacIntyre the Mentor – Rachel Lu

MacIntyre the Mentor – Rachel Lu

I first encountered Alasdair MacIntyre in the usual place: the opening pages of After Virtue, his 1981 classic. I was suitably impressed by his argument for the incoherence of modern moral philosophy. To my 19-year-old (literally sophomoric) mind, After Virtue may have inspired the puckish glee many youthful readers draw from Atlas Shrugged or Beyond Good and Evil. It felt delightfully daring and subversive. My second encounter with MacIntyre wa…

Seamus Heaney, Oakland Ballers, and Frugality

“The Virtues of Alasdair MacIntyre.” Brad East reminded me of this old essay that Stanley Hauerwas wrote reflecting on MacIntyre’s thought. It’s superb: “Few dispute that Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the most important philosophers of our time. That reputation, however, does him little good. It is as though, quite apart from the man, there exists a figure called Alasdair MacIntyre whose position you know whether or not you have read him—and whos…

Trying to develop a succinct synthesis of the most relevant and central themes of Alasdair MacIntyre's thought, we must remember that they are mainly articulated around the "After Virtue Project." This purpose, which began in 1977, unified much of his mature work and represents a profound critique of modern modernity and modern moral philosophy. MacIntyre argued that contemporary culture suffers from evident moral and ethical fragmentation, evid…

The late philosopher thought modern societies in the conflict between individualization and bureaucratization – and rejected the "benedict option" of his admirer Rod Dreher.