Product Description

When "After Virtue" was first published 25 years ago, it was immediately obvious that Alasdair MacIntyre had produced an important and highly controversial re-evaluation of contemporary moral philosophy. MacIntyre drew on more than 500 years of history to explore the causes of the current crisis in moral description and showed how attempts to formulate moral principles had grown progressively more difficult in the period after the Enlightenment. With extraordinary vigour and range, MacIntyre convincingly explains what has driven moral philosophy into its current quagmire and suggests ways out of it. This edition includes a new preface in which Professor MacIntyre responds to some of the central questions raised by the first edition, and reflects on the progress or otherwise of moral philosophy in the intervening quarter-century. The status of "After Virtue" is now assured. This new edition gives us a chance to assess its impact and to reach out to a new generation of readers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #64724 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-20
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
"'Offers a diagnosis of the present state of moral philosophy which expands into a diagnosis of the present state of modern society.' Richard Rorty 'Frank, original and full of incidental insights... unquestionably one of the most lively, interesting and provocative books to have appeared for at least a decade.' Steven Lukes"

About the Author
Alasdair MacIntyre is Research Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame University, USA. For a succinct assessment of his works and their significance see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alasdair_MacIntyre

Customer Reviews

Brief
Excellent. This work systematically destroys the pretentions of the new normative ethics. Post enlightenment the ethical structures of society have been continually undermined. Macintyre asks the question Nietzsche or Aristotle? We cannot flinch, we must be either ethical or anti-ethical. A work of incredible relevance and of incredible brilliance.

Don't waste your money
The book has obvious erudition. Chapter 2 even attempts to define a problem but only in the light of a very dubious allegory advanced in chapter 1.

Anyone educated in science, engineering or medicine and therefore used to a disciplined and rationalist style of argument is likely to be disappointed. The allegorical and pompous approach of the entire work promises much but in the end fails to deliver anything of substance and leaves exactly the sort of intellectual vacuum that he attempts to indict other modern philosophers for creating.

The Wikipedia entry on this volume states "After Virtue is a highly regarded book on moral philosophy" and then explains its content in the clear language of an encyclopaedia. Compare the style of the Wikipedia article to the actual language of the book. On page 187 paragraph 3 the first sentence for me encapsulates the highly irritating and pointless style of discourse. "By `practice' I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended." Doesn't that sentence really sing! My objection is not just to the appallingly bad and indisciplined structure that this philosopher feels licensed to use. Once you have considered what he perhaps means it is almost entirely vacuous.

Two sentences later by way of explication we have " Bricklaying is not a practise; architecture is. Planting turnips is not a practice; agriculture is." If like me you feel this is pretentious garbage then this book is not for you, for it typifies the tone.

Occasionally, an honest book emerges
After Virtue, poses all the important questions on what we really mean by morality and virtue. Are our senses of right and wrong, consistent/universal or personal? Should they be and can they be? What did the ancient make of it and can goodness escape the emotional subjectivism and be rational?