After Virtue?

Abstract

Alasdair MacIntyre’s book After Virtue (London: Duckworth, 1981) begins with what he calls, rightly, a disquieting suggestion, namely, that with respect to morality, all we possess ‘are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived’ (p. 2). Unsurprisingly, the consequences are said to be far-reaching: ‘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’ (p. 2). The author is aware of an obvious objection to such a sweeping thesis: ‘If a catastrophe sufficient to throw the language and practice of morality into grave disorder had occurred, surely we should all know about it. It would indeed be one of the central facts of our history. Yet our history lies open to view, and no record of any such catastrophe survives’ (p. 3). Yet, MacIntyre argues, if the confusion is as deep as he thinks it is, ‘the catastrophe will have to have been of such a kind that it was not and has not been — except perhaps by a very few — recognised as a catastrophe’ (p. 3).