Philosopher views

Bibliography

Alasdair Maclntyre. AFTER VIRTUE: A STUDY IN MORAL THEORY. Notre Dame, ID: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981.

447-466.
Alasdair Maclntyre. “Philosophy, ‘Other’ Disciplines and their Histories: A Rejoinder to Richard Rorty.” SOUNDINGS 45 (1982): 127-145.

Columbia University Ness, 1967.

1

UNIVERSAL MORAL PRINCIPLES DO NOT EXIST

1. MORALITY IS DEPENDENT ON SOCIAL LIFE CHANGES

Alasdair Maclntyre. Professor of social philosophy at the University of Essex, A SHORT HISTORY OF ETHICS, 1966. p. 1.

In fact, of course, moral concepts change as social life changes. I deliberately do not write “because social

life changes,” for this might suggest that social life is one thing, morality another, and that there is merely an external, contingent causal relationship between them. This is obviously false. Moral concepts are

embodied in and are partially constitutive of forms of social life. One key way in which we may identify

one form of social life as distinct from another is by identifying differences in moral concepts.

Alasdair Maclntyre. professor of social philosophy at the University of Essex, A SHORT HISTORY OF

ETHICS, 1966. p. 3.

My quarrel with this view will emerge from time to time in these essays. But what I hope will emerge even more clearly is the function of history in relation to conceptual analysis, for it is the function of history in relation to conceptual analysis, for it is here that Santayana’s epigram that he who is ignorant of the history of philosophy is doomed to repeat it finds its point. It is all too easy for philosophical analysis, divorced from historical inquiry, to insulate itself from correction. In ethics it can happen in the following way. A certain unsystematically selected class of moral concepts and judgments is made the subject of attention. From the study of these it is concluded that specifically moral discourse possesses certain characteristics.

When counterexamples are adduced to show that this is not always so, these counter examples are dismissed as irrelevant, because not examples of moral discourse; and they are shown to be nonmoral by exhibiting their lack of the necessary characteristics.
3. VALUES ARE TIED TO SOCIAL ACTION

Alasdair Maclntyre. professor of social philosophy at the University of Essex, A SHORT HISTORY OF ETHICS, 1966. p. 92.

I have tried to delineate in the argument so far an ideal historical sequence. Such a sequence is useful for two different types of reason. It brings out the connection between historical intelligibility and logical relationships. I cannot understand the logical structure of a given philosophical theory, for example, unless I understand the problems to which it is intended to be a solution.
4. THERE IS NO DISCUSSION OF VALUES DEVOID OF HUMAN MOVEMENTS

Alasdair Maclntyre. professor of social philosophy at the University of Essex, A SHORT HISTORY OF ETHICS, 1966. p. 85.

Ethics is concerned with human actions. Human actions are not simply bodily movements. We can identify as instances of the same human action deeds which are executed by means of quite different bodily movements--as the movements involved in shaking a hand and those involved in putting out a flag may both be examples of welcoming somebody.
5. DEFINITION OF JUSTICE IS CULTURALLY DEPENDENT

Alasdair Maclntyre. Professor of social philosophy at the University of Essex, WHOSE JUSTICE? WHOSE RATIONALITY? 1988, p.1.

Attention to the reasons which are adduced for offering different and rival answers to such questions makes it clear that underlying this wide diversity of judgments upon particular types of issue are a set of conflicting conceptions of justice, conceptions which are strikingly at odds with one another in a number of ways. Some conceptions of justice make the concept of desert central, while others deny it any relevance at all. Some conceptions appeal to inalienable human rights, others to some notion of social contract, and others again to a standard of utility.
6. THE HISTORY OF ETHICS LIBERATES US FROM ABSOLUTE CLAIMS

Alasdair Maclntyre. professor of social philosophy at the University of Essex, A SHORT HISTORY OF ETHICS, 1966. p. 269.

They ascribe it to the nature of moral concepts as such. And in so doing, like Sartre, they try to absolutize their own moralities by means of an appeal to conceptual considerations. But these attempts could only succeed if moral concepts were indeed timeless and unhistorical and if there were only one available set of moral concepts. One virtue of the history of moral philosophy is that it shows us that this is not true and that moral concepts themselves have a history. To understand this is to be liberated from any false absolutist claims.