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The MacIntyre Reader by Alasdair C. MacIntyre(December 1, 1998) Paperback
Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the most controversial philosophers and social theorists of our time. He opposes liberalism and postmodernism with the teleological arguments of an updated Thomistic Aristotelianism. It is this tradition, he claims, which presents the best theory so far about the nature of rationality, morality and politics. This is the first reader of MacIntyre's work. It include extracts from and his own synopses of two famous books from the 1980s, After Justice and Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, as well as the whole of several shorter works (one published for the first time in English) and two interviews. Taken together, these constitute not only a representative collection of his work but also the most powerful and accessible presentation of his arguments yet available.The reader also includes a summary, by the editor, of the development of MacIntyre's central ideas, and an extensive guide to further reading. Students will find the book a useful guide to MacIntyre's case against both capitalist institutions and academic orthodoxies.
- GenresPhilosophy
Paperback
First published October 14, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 16, 2018
MacIntyre's "The Theses on Feuerbach: A Road Not Taken" is genuinely one of the most thought-provoking pieces of philosophy I've ever read.
October 7, 2009
This is a somewhat difficult book to “review” – it’s a collection of essays of academic philosophy by the neo-Aristotelian Thomas MacIntyre. Most of the criticism I read, regardless of the matter, tends to be written for a general audience – and therefore one can talk about issues such as writing style, accessibility, and humor in the text. With a book of pure theory, however, such discussions are superfluous (which is for the best, since most philosophers are not exactly dynamic writers) – the only thing that matters is the coherence of the philosophy.
MacIntyre is a virtue theorist – he seeks to rescue the words “good” and “evil” (particularly the former) from assaults of moral and cultural relativism. Much of his theory revolves around the idea of a “practice” – that while we may have some trouble defining the good in some abstract sense, we can define the good within a practice. Thus, the good for an artist is that which allows the practitioner to best fulfill the ends of being an artist. These ends may not be set in stone (indeed, they are constantly shifting) – but neither are they relative: they, ultimately, define the practice. When one calls oneself a teacher, artist, politician, skateboarder, or runner, one is implicitly accepting the set of rules and endpoints that define the practice.
While I find myself sympathetic with almost all of MacIntyre’s arguments, I feel he mostly fails to fully counter the advance of relativism – rather, he mainly succeeds in pushing the problem up a level. While I agree with his point that within any culture or practice the rules are not relative, he provides no ability to decide between to competing cultural value systems. As long as they are internally consistent, there’s no way, within his system, to claim that one system is truer or better than another – this is only possible when a certain system has run into a series of internal inconsistencies, from which an alternative system could provide an out.
However, these cultural-level conflicts are rare, at least with respect to the individual. As food for thought about how to conducts one own life, MacIntyre provides a lot of food for though, updating Aristotle for the modern world.
MacIntyre is a virtue theorist – he seeks to rescue the words “good” and “evil” (particularly the former) from assaults of moral and cultural relativism. Much of his theory revolves around the idea of a “practice” – that while we may have some trouble defining the good in some abstract sense, we can define the good within a practice. Thus, the good for an artist is that which allows the practitioner to best fulfill the ends of being an artist. These ends may not be set in stone (indeed, they are constantly shifting) – but neither are they relative: they, ultimately, define the practice. When one calls oneself a teacher, artist, politician, skateboarder, or runner, one is implicitly accepting the set of rules and endpoints that define the practice.
While I find myself sympathetic with almost all of MacIntyre’s arguments, I feel he mostly fails to fully counter the advance of relativism – rather, he mainly succeeds in pushing the problem up a level. While I agree with his point that within any culture or practice the rules are not relative, he provides no ability to decide between to competing cultural value systems. As long as they are internally consistent, there’s no way, within his system, to claim that one system is truer or better than another – this is only possible when a certain system has run into a series of internal inconsistencies, from which an alternative system could provide an out.
However, these cultural-level conflicts are rare, at least with respect to the individual. As food for thought about how to conducts one own life, MacIntyre provides a lot of food for though, updating Aristotle for the modern world.
February 15, 2016
Un muestrario de las ideas del filósofo A. Macintyre, de clara orientación aristotélico-tomista.
Es un tipo de obra que leo por disciplina gustosa, como A Secular Age de C. Taylor, con la esperanza de entender algunas partes que me den explicaciones de la vida, de la realidad, pero en las que además hay algo de belleza. Como un espectáculo estético en el que quizá no se comprende todo, pero hay una experiencia estética en el tratamiento de las ideas (como los últimos cuartetos de Mozart que son más que sus notas).
Contiene ideas valiosas como la utilización de su concepto de «práctica» para derivar la posibilidad de concluir cosas de «deber ser» a partir de «es» y combatiendo así la idea de D. Hume.
Densa, compleja, incompleta, la publicación es un buen acto de presentación del filósofo.
Es un tipo de obra que leo por disciplina gustosa, como A Secular Age de C. Taylor, con la esperanza de entender algunas partes que me den explicaciones de la vida, de la realidad, pero en las que además hay algo de belleza. Como un espectáculo estético en el que quizá no se comprende todo, pero hay una experiencia estética en el tratamiento de las ideas (como los últimos cuartetos de Mozart que son más que sus notas).
Contiene ideas valiosas como la utilización de su concepto de «práctica» para derivar la posibilidad de concluir cosas de «deber ser» a partir de «es» y combatiendo así la idea de D. Hume.
Densa, compleja, incompleta, la publicación es un buen acto de presentación del filósofo.
April 24, 2012
As far as readers go, this isn't a bad one. However, I just don't think that MacIntyre's work is that amenable to the reader format. Esp. for teaching undergrads. I feel like this book would be an excellent intro to MacIntyre at the graduate level. For grad students that need to be familiar with his basic ideas--but no more than that. The snippets of larger works are so small and the ideas so dense, that undergraduates have a really hard time understanding the ideas. I feel like they would be better served by teaching from the larger works.
July 5, 2015
For me, reading MacIntyre is like reading John Gray's "Straw Dogs" - I often find that I violently disagree with his conclusions, but his positions are argued with such force and clarity that I come away altered.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews