After Virtue summary

Moral Chaos and Its Consequences

In After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre, it becomes apparent that our society is in a state of profound moral confusion. We find ourselves navigating a chaotic landscape of subjective ethics, where we can no longer agree on what virtue even means. According to MacIntyre, this moral fragmentation – an aftereffect of the Enlightenment's failure to provide a unified view of the world – marks a departure from Aristotelian views of ethics and virtue grounded in shared community standards.

MacIntyre casts a wide net, tracing the disintegration of morality from the Greek, to the medieval, post-Enlightenment, and modern periods. He provides a nostaligic portrayal of medieval society where morality was deeply rooted in the complex weave of community life and interdependence. This contrasts sharply with the contemporary disarray where 'enlightened' individuals are left to their personal morality, leading to the fragmentation and incoherence we experience today.

The Failure of Enlightenment and the Emotivist Society

MacIntyre argues that the Enlightenment project, supposed to replace Aristotelianism with a foundation for moral discourse accessible to reason alone, ended in failure. Instead of anchoring ethical theories rationally, the Enlightenment attempted to separate values from facts, hence leaning towards relativism. This leads to the creation of 'emotivism', a theory he uses to describe our present moral state where value judgments are simply expressions of personal preference.

In the emotivist society, as MacIntyre puts it, manipulative rhetoric reigns as debate stems from personal feelings or preferences rather than a common understanding of virtue. This lack of objectivity pressures us into accepting authoritative or bureaucratic edicts as moral standards, undermining our autonomy and leading to further moral disorientation.

A Return to the Virtue Ethics

As a solution to the moral crisis, MacIntyre suggests a return to Aristotelian virtue ethics, a system where moral rules are embedded within a community's shared practices, narrative history, and tradition. Virtue ethics, he argues, offers a way out of emotivism as it focuses on the character traits needed to fulfil our roles within the community and achieve our 'telos', or ultimate purpose. In MacIntyre’s own words, man is a "story-telling animal," emphasizing our need for communal narrative to make sense of our individual and shared moral lives.

The proposed return to virtue ethics is not a call for blind traditionalism, but rather an appeal for us to engage in active dialogue with our shared narrative and communal practices. This approach reintegrates morality with the social context, affirming our interdependencies and offering a substantial, shared conception of the good life.

Breaking Free from Modern Moral Dissolution

In the final sections of After Virtue, MacIntyre provides a critique of liberalism, which he considers an embodiment of emotivism, leading to standard-less decision making and an atomised society. He urges us to re-evaluate our political landscape, structured around aimless individualism, and to reinvigorate our social institutions with a cohesive moral framework derived from shared practices and narratives.

MacIntyre’s After Virtue is thus a profound call to arms against the moral dissolution of our times. By urging a return to a collective understanding of virtue drawn from shared narratives and community practices, MacIntyre provides a possible path out of our modern moral malaise and into a more coherent, ethical future inspired by the Aristotelian tradition.