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Alasdair MacIntyre Biography

Alasdair MacIntyre

Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (/ˈæləstər ˈmækɪnˌtaɪər/; born 12 January 1929) is a Scottish philosopher, primarily known for his contribution to moral and political philosophy, but also known for his work in history of philosophy and theology. MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981) is widely recognised as one of the most important works of Anglophone moral and political philosophy in the 20th century. He is senior research fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Aristotelian Studies in Ethics and Politics (CASEP) at London Metropolitan University, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and Permanent Senior Distinguished Research Fellow at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture. During his lengthy academic career, he also taught at Brandeis University, Duke University, Vanderbilt University, and Boston University.

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Alasdair MacIntyre Quotes

Imprisoning philosophy within the professionalizations and specializations of an institutionalized curriculum, after the manner of our contemporary European and North American culture, is arguably a good deal more effective in neutralizing its effects than either religious censorship or political terror

American, Curriculum, European, Philosophy, Political, Religious

A striking feature of moral and political argument in the modern world is the extent to which it is innovators, radicals, and revolutionaries who revive old doctrines, while their conservative and reactionary opponents are the inventors of new ones.

Conservative, Doctrine, Doctrines, Ones, Political, World

The good life for man is the life spent in seeking for the good life for man, and the virtues necessary for the seeking are those which will enable us to understand what more and what else the good life for man is.

Good Life, Man, Men, Spent, Understand, Virtue

What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without ground for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time.

Dark, Ground, Intellectual, Tradition, Waiting, What Matters

A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves out to achieve instead - often not recognizing fully what they were doing - was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming age of barbarism and darkness.

Barbarism, Community, Darkness, Fully, Men, Task

The way to bring out the best in the British people is to attack them.

Bring, British, Peace, People, War, Way

Truth has been displaced as a value and replaced by psychological effectiveness.

Effectiveness, Has Beens, Psychological, Replaced, Truth, Value

There ought not be two histories, one of political and moral action and one of political and moral theorizing, because there were not two pasts, one populated only by actions, the other only by theories. Every action is the bearer and expression of more or less theory-laden beliefs and concepts; every piece of theorizing and every expression of belief is a politcal and moral action.

Expression, Ought, Past, Pasts, Politcal, Two

We are waiting not for a Godot but for another-doubtless very different-St. Benedict.

Benedict, Different, Godot, Waiting

Facts, like telescopes and wigs for gentlemen, were a seventeenth century invention.

Gentleman, Invention, Like, Seventeenth, Telescopes, Wigs

The hypothesis I wish to advance is thatthe language of morality is ingrave disorder. . . . What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have--very largely if not entirely--lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.

Advance, Expression, Keys, Parts, Significance, Wish

What this brings out is that modern politics cannot be a matter of genuine moral consensus. And it is not. Modern politics is civil war carried on by other means.

Civil, Genuine, Matter, Mean, Politics, War

Modern systematic politics, whether liberal, conservative, radical, or socialist, simply has to be rejected from a standpoint that owes genuine allegiance to the tradition of the virtues; for modern politics itself expresses in its institutional forms a systematic rejection of that tradition

Conservative, Forms, Modern, Rejection, Systematic

I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’

Answer, Answers, Ifs, Part, Question, Stories

It is only by participation in a rational, practice-based community that one becomes rational.

Becomes, Community, Participation, Practice, Rational

Morality which is no particular socity's morality is to be found nowhere.

Found, Morality, Nowhere, Particular

Virtues are dispositions not only to act in particular ways, but also to feel in particular ways. To act virtuously is not, as Kant was later to think, to act against inclination; it is to act from inclination formed by the cultivation of the virtues.

Act, Inclination, Think, Thinking, Virtue, Way

At the foundation of moral thinking lie beliefs in statements the truth of which no further reason can be given.

Foundation, Further, Lying, Statements, Thinking, Truth

Christians have given atheists less and less in which to disbelieve

Atheist, Atheists, Christian, Christians, Disbelieve, Given

Raymond Aron ascribes to Weber the view that 'each man's conscience is irrefutable. '. . . while [Weber] holds that an agent may be more or less rational in acting consistently with his values, the choice of any one particular evaluative stance or commitment can be no more rational than any other. All faiths and all evaluations are equally non-rational.

Aron, Choice, Choices, Commitment, Irrefutable, Views

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