After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Second Edition (1981)

MacIntyre resurrected a virtue-based ethics and tied it to politics and society in an interesting way -- through narrative -- in order to connect Catholic thought, progressive politics, and democracy. His vision of community is interesting, but not, I think, altogether complete.

This is a sweeping book that covers moral theory from Aristotle up to today. MacIntyre provides a bleak view of the state of modern moral discourse, regarding it as failing to be rational, and failing to admit to being irrational. He claims that older forms of moral discourse were in better shape, particularly singling out Aristotle's moral philosophy as an exemplar. After Virtue is among the most important texts in the recent revival of virtue ethics.
MacIntyre's argument is not just about the collapse of communities, it’s also about the transformation in how we think about the moral life that has purged the language of virtue from our speech and from our sensibility. After Virtue ends by posing the question 'Nietzsche or Aristotle?', although MacIntyre acknowledges that the book does not give sufficient grounds for a definitive answer that it is Aristotle, not Nietzsche, who points to the best solution for the problems that the book has diagnosed. Those grounds are set out in MacIntyre's subsequent works, in which he elaborates a sophisticated revision of the philosophical tradition of Aristotelianism.
In this work he is an advocate of the community over the individual and it is a sad story, but told no better than here. ( )

Reading this was one of those "aha!" moments for me. I am convinced that some sort of virtue-based approach to ethics is not only traditional, but evangelically fruitful in a modern culture which conditions its members to reflexively resist "rules".

After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory by Alasdair C. MacIntyre (1984) ( )

This is one of the truly worth while reads of the last 20 years, and may while change the landscape of Christian ethics for the next 100. MacIntye challenges the very foundation stones of ethical arguments based on biblical interpretation. An absolute must read ( )