Alasdair MacIntyre 1929-2025
Alasdair MacIntyre died a few days ago. I have seen a few notices, but they seem, even though admiring, to rather blunt the force of MacIntyre’s achievements. I first came across his name when I called Maurice Cowling on the telephone in 1992 to arrange being supervised for the history of political thought paper. “Have you read anything?” asked Cowling. No, I said. “Oh,” he said. “Then you’d better read MacIntyre’s Short History of Ethics.” I went to Heffers and bought a copy: now one of the oldest books I still have. NB I kept my copy of MacIntyre; but, even though Bertrand Russell was my intellectual master when I was 20, I let go of my copy of History of Western Philosophy many years ago.
MacIntyre had a long life. Look at the dates. He was fully compos mentis by the 1950s, and wrote his first book, Marxism and Christianity, in that decade, suggesting an axis of interest of which he was to make much. He was, and probably always considered himself to be, on the Left. Well, it was not the secular Perry Anderson / Eric Hobsbawm / E.H. Carr left, or the Methodist-historical E.P. Thompson / Christopher Hill left, or the showy-struck-by-the-1960s Tariq Ari / Christopher Hitchens / Tony Blair left. It was the sort of Left which could never have anything in common with the Hayek Right, but, whether MacIntyre liked it or not, it had something in common with the Burke Right, the Maistre Right, the Donoso Cortes Right: in having a sense that the real problem of modernity was the lack of any appeal to a standard outside of ourselves.
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‘a sense that the real problem of modernity was the lack of any appeal to a standard outside of ourselves’
Hmm….
‘Modernity’ is a modern capitalist creation.
Certainly modern or industrial capitalism began in England.
England is a post Christian ethical Christian society that very much has standards ‘outside of ourselves’, defined by a system of law rooted via ‘precedent’ in our Christian past.
And the U.S. government of today makes more mention of a Christian God than has any other recent U.S. administration.
So, if Macintyre really believed ‘modernity’ had no reference to an external set of moral standards, that seems, at least to me, to be a pretty fundamental misconception.
Good point, though we do seem to be inexorably drifting way from those roots.
England is a post Christian ethical Christian society that very much has standards ‘outside of ourselves’, defined by a system of law rooted via ‘precedent’ in our Christian past. I think that’s missing the point. Especially since the de-christianizing of this law in the second half of the 20th century, there’s a lot of stuff which is legal or semi-legal whose morality can – especially from a Christian standpoint – very much be questioned. Eg, a traditional Catholic standpoint is that any form of sexual activity, even perfectly casual flirts, outside of married couples (married by the Catholic Church, obviously) trying to conceive is against the will of God and thus, sinful/ amoral. The same pretty much applies to all other spare activities of the hedonistic, modern consumer society. Christians are supposed to refrain from many things, eg, drunk partying, and do all others in modesty and with moderation. Exzessive eating is as much a sin as being exzessively fond of oneself (vanity) or one’s achievements in the world (pride). Christians are supposed to be humble and not proud. And it goes without saying that they’re especially not supposed to be proud about having a particulary un-christian sex life, not… Read more »
The Christian code of ethics is set out in the ten commandments.
The post Christian ethical Christian code boils down to:
Honour your father and your mother.
You shall not kill.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness.
You shall not covet your neighbour’s goods.
That’s it.
All of those precepts have been expanded, developed, interpreted as an English code of law based on precedent, much of it established while England was still an overtly Christian country.
You’re still missing the point. MacIntyre is obviously referring to private lifestyle choices of law-abiding citizens or the kind of mostly law-abiding citizens who pass as normal in our society, ie, those who don’t break any laws or rules beyond speed limits, parking regulations and consumption of controlled substances.
You’re also missing the point in another way: The base of law enforcement is not appeals to moral but threats of violence when laws are broken. Secular law is not a moral code society is expected to agree with and live up to but a set of rules the state is willing to enforce regardless of what individuals may believe about them.
Some of these laws are also not really enforced: In theory, stealing other people’s property is illegal. In practice, shoplifters and even burglars can expect to get away with it becaus the state/ the police simply doesn”t care that much.
True, though many people, me included and probably you and Monro, refrain from breaking the most important laws at least not because of any threat of imprisonment but because we feel it’s wrong to break those laws and do not want to do so.
Many people do that. However, many other people don’t. Eg, people are openly trying to sell stolen goods in Reading pedestrian zone (they don’t talk to me any longer because I’ve told them off for enough times but I don’t think they’ve gone away) and small shops being raided by the police for selling booze stolen from supermarkets are a pretty regular occurence.
Or: Some years ago, my parents bought a shelf for me while they were visiting at the local John Lewis and promptly fell prey to a textbook “bait & switch” scam. I had a run-in with the same guy (probably) somewhat later when I wanted to buy a chair but since I’m somewhat stubborn and easily annoyed when people talk to me for no conceivable reason, he couldn’t work this on me. That’s a nominally illegal sales tactic but it’s certainly nevertheless common-place.
The moral compass of many people is calibrated by “Can I get away with this?” If they believe they can, they’ll usually do it. The same was probably already true in more openly Christian times. But it was socially much less accepted as “Well, it’s just how things are.”
It’s certainly possible that a drift away from religion has weakened some people’s moral compasses, yes.
I reject utterly half of these.
The only point of this article is to celebrate the life of Mr MacIntyre.
And that is well done. Thank you.
With regard to ‘a standard outside of ourselves’, which the author suggests MacIntyre believed we now lack, English law, based on precedent, derives from a Christian set of ethics and distills that set of ethics into a code of constraints upon behaviour.
Everything else, in English law as in Christianity, is acceptable.
So, if that really was MacIntyre’s belief, it seems to me, that was a pretty fundamental misconception.
Of course the best ‘standard outside of ourselves’ is probably this:
‘Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all.’
Breaking
Tommy Robinson has just been released. Currently live on YouTube.
https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1MnxnwgEDamKO?t=KSdCVUVf7YkbCQMUEmmrjQ&s=08
The Brave New World policy on birth rate won’t work, paying people to have babies, excepting those who are on the make and on the take and have no interest in getting into work or their children to work. Our society is depressed, distressed by being told it’s racist and unfairly ‘white privileged’ and so at the back of the DEI queue for everything. We are soon to be a minority in our towns, but without the protected characteristics given to other communities of strangers. Our children have a bleak outlook, why have them? A secure, happy, confident nation with good prospects for children will produce them. Not a cheap bribe. Mr Farage needs to be more precise. He is planning to pour Universal Credit cash to mothers with more than two children, any mothers with any domestic arrangements be it polygamous, single, monogamous, casual. He speaks of British Families, what does he exclude? Look at the last Census figures to see where the booming birth rates are. This is very disappointing. Yes to scrapping Net Zero but not to fund this invitation to spawn lots of children you can’t afford without handouts. And this means demand for bigger houses… Read more »
I was introduced to MacIntyre in 1969 by the teacher of Religion, alarmed at my atheism. I revisited his “After Virtue” a dozen or score years ago. I threw it away during a house move. Everyone had praised this book. Supercilious, pretentious, something for academic parasites, so thought me.