In his book After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre considers most moral philosophy since the Enlightenment to have made a fundamental error: Enlightenment-era instrumental rationality divorces itself from its historical foundations. The rational subject is always embedded in an historical context which interacts with that subject in the present. The concepts we have at our disposal in modernity, and the stories we tell ourselves, are part of a tradition which has its roots in ancient myths, so to ignore these proto-stories—or worse, to deny our involvement in these traditions—is to be intellectually dishonest. To MacIntyre, this is exactly what modern moral philosophy has been doing.
The consequences of this error for Enlightenment-era philosophy are manifold: the futile search for a universal, ahistorical ground for morality, the abandoning of Aristotelian teleology—that humans have a proper end—and a singular focus on the individual at the expense of community.
MacIntyre recommends Aristotelian virtue ethics as an antidote for modern ethics. Aristotle gives us a link between the moral life and the political life, something missing from Enlightenment-era ethical theories. For Aristotle, the virtues both necessitate and are necessary for the rational community they are imbedded in; to live a moral life means nothing without a well run polis, and a successful politics is impossible without the flourishing of its participants—their achieving eudaimonia.
But MacIntyre criticises Aristotle for falling prey to the same ahistoricism of modern moral philosophy. These ahistorical accounts of ethics see conflict as something to be avoided or managed. They understand the ultimate goal of the moral project as the elimination of tragic happenings, those times where suffering is unavoidable. Aristotle believes that a tragedy only occurs because of a personal flaw, a lack in the possession or enacting of the virtues. MacIntyre sees this as a misstep in moral thinking, and a denial of the tragic nature of human life. On his account of the virtues—an amalgam of Aristotelian and Sophoclean insights—MacIntyre views tragedy as the very stage where exercise of the virtues is most needed; the virtues are there precisely to help us navigate the choppy waters, not eliminate them entirely (as if we could!).
MacIntyre’s understanding of modern moral values and intuitions as part of a cultural tradition is immensely satisfying. It is particularly useful at diffusing the terror which grips those whose seek a universal ground for morality, thinking pure relativism as the only alternative: the virtues are not arbitrary, MacIntyre points out that they are part of this same tradition, a way for the sea-faring Homeric Greeks to remember their cultural past as horse people from the Eurasian steppe.
However, I worry about the rigidity of social roles an enactment of Aristotelian virtue ethics would entail. It seems the possibility of living otherwise is absent on both Aristotle’s and MacIntyre’s account, something I think we should be reticent to give up. Without it, no emancipatory social movements are possible—it is simply immoral for women to demand participation in the public realm, for slaves to demand freedom, or for ‘perverse’ sexualities (to use Foucault’s term) to demand existence. Indeed, Aristotle’s world reflects this lack of freedom.