Alasdair MacIntyre (1929–2025)

Aki a szépirodalom emlőin nevelkedett, annak meglehetősen szokatlan, amikor egy mondaton belül háromszor találkozik a „feltenni és megválaszolni” szókapcsolattal, de hát ilyen a filozófia nyelve, mit tegyünk. Elolvas az ember tizenvalahány oldalt, és az a benyomása, hogy ő ezt négy egyszerű vagy két bővített mondatban össze tudná foglalni. Ilyenkor alapesetben hajlamos vagyok kilőni a szerzőt magamban a Holdba – de ha a neve mellett látom a dr, prof., show more emeritus, exelenciás uram stb. jelzőket, akkor nyilván visszaveszek magamból, győz a tekintélytisztelet, és inkább elolvasom még egyszer, hátha elsiklottam valami fölött. És hát valóban: bele lehet szokni. Bár az elején nagyon kellett gyürkőznöm, de a közepétől helyenként kifejezetten élveztem. Mondjuk azért továbbra is túlzásnak érzem a hátsó borító jelzőjét, miszerint „olvasmányos” – no persze, Hegelhez képest, mondjuk.

A cím, az kicsit becsapós. Némiképp arra számítottam, hogy MacIntyre egy történelmi értelemben vett tárlatvezetésen végigvisz engem az etikatörténeten. Nem, sajnos és szerencsére nem, mert a szerző szemmel láthatóan túl erős személyiség ahhoz, hogy szolgaian foglalja össze a morálfilozófia fordulatos eseményeit, szimpla kézikönyvet alkotva, inkább egy nagyon sűrű, nagyon szubjektív, nagyon saját konstrukcióban tárja elénk őket. Homéroszon kezdi a sort, akinél hipotézise szerint az erkölcsi formulák (pl. „jó”) még egy tradicionális társadalmon belüli szerephez voltak rögzítve, majd átvágtat (hmmm…. vágtat…) a három sztáron, Szókratészen, Platónon és Arisztotelészen, bemutatva, a tradicionális berendezkedésből a poliszba való átmenet során hogyan veszítették el a kapcsolatot ezek a kifejezések az eredeti gyökerükkel, és miképpen vált szükségessé újradefiniálásuk*. (Ez a folyamat – változó intenzitással – koronként megismétlődik.) Ezután egy huszárvágással máris Machiavellinél és Luthernél találjuk magunkat – utóbbi új szintre helyezte a morálfilozófiát azzal, hogy teológiájában megkerülhetetlenül ott van az individuum fogalma, hiszen, mint rámutat, ha meghalsz, te vagy az, aki meghal, és senki más nem teheti meg ezt helyetted. És innen haladunk tovább Hobbes-on, Kanton, Hegelen, Nietzshén át a jelenkorig – megkímélek mindenkit, köztük magamat is, a folyamat részletes taglalásától, már így is monstre értékelés ez. A kulcsszavak úgyis adottak. MacIntyre ezt az egész utat két állandó ingadozásra fókuszálva mutatja be. Az egyik ingadozás aközött zajlik, hogy az individuum saját erkölcseit, vagy a közösség erkölcseit tekintjük prioritásnak (értsünk közösség alatt egy, a közösséget joggal-jogtalanul képviselő uralkodó osztályt, vagy akár a polgárok túlnyomó többségét, mint a demokráciákban). A második pedig aközött, hogy a morál visszavezethető-e valamiféle objektív és általánosítható szabályra, vagy pedig szükségszerűen az egyén szubjektív és változó individualitásában gyökerezik. (Vagy, megkerülve az egész kérdést: valamiféle abszolútumhoz kötjük. Ilyenkor kvázi Isten válik az etikai törvények aranyfedezetévé.) MacIntyre világában az etika ezek között az ellentétes elképzelések között ingázik, és alighanem továbbra is ezek gondoskodnak majd a morál dinamikájáról.

MacIntyre egész művére jellemző, hogy szigorral fordul a filozófus-életművek felé. Azonban ezt a szigort magára is kiterjeszti, alapos előszavában ugyanis keményen nekimegy saját gondolatainak, mert Az etika rövid történeté-ben szinte csak odavetőlegesen foglalkozott a keresztény filozófiával**, és nem figyelt fel annak mélységeire. (Igaz, ami igaz: amíg a görögökre csaknem 130 oldalt szánt, addig a görögöktől Lutherig terjedő időszakot tizedannyi terjedelemben taglalta.) Mindezzel együtt ez egy komplett, kész szöveg, benne egy nagyon tekintélyes elmeépítménnyel, ami csábít a vitára, az ellenkezésre, de így van ez jól: maga sem állítja, hogy örök és változtathatatlan igazságokra bukkant rá. Áthatja az a gondolat, hogy az etikai vizsgálódások csak bizonyos társadalmi-történelmi kontextusban érthetőek – amennyiben elszakadunk ettől, lágy nyáresti elmetornává satnyulnak. Rugalmas szöveg, formálódik az ember fejében, mint a gyurma, ha az ember hajlandó dolgozni vele.

* Azt hiszitek, ez egy túl hosszú mondat? Akkor nektek MacIntyre sem fog tetszeni.
** Amúgy is volt egy olyan érzésem, hogy a „korai MacIntyre” meglehetősen lekezelő a keresztény spirituális filozófiával szemben. Meglátásom szerint ez három vélekedésére vezethető vissza:
1.) Ha a kereszténység az erkölcsi normák végső okait Istennek tulajdonítja, voltaképpen kiemeli azokat a tudományos vizsgálódás tárgyköréből, és a spiritualitáshoz sorolja őket. Ebben az esetben pedig a tudós nem tehet mást, mint széttárja a kezét: mert ő itt már semmit sem tehet. (Arról nem is beszélve, hogy ebben az esetben azok, akik Isten létében kételkednek, potenciálisan kikerülnek az etika hatálya alól.)
2.) A radikális kereszténység hajlamos az önszeretetet és az önzetlenséget ellentétes fogalmakként leírni, amik kibékíthetetlenek, de MacIntyre szerint ez bűnös leegyszerűsítés. Hiszen egy önzetlen cselekedet örömet okozhat nekünk, amiből következik, hogy akár az önszeretetből is származhat. Ez a leegyszerűsítés pedig távolabb visz minket a morál valódi gyökereinek megértésétől – már ha azok megérthetőek egyáltalán.
3.) Az eredendő bűn fogalmával olyan érvet adott egyes konzervatív filozófusok kezébe, amit azok felhasználhatnak bizonyos pozitív változások visszautasítására – hiszen ha az ember eredendően bűnös, akkor felesleges, sőt nevetséges bármiféle társadalomjobbításban hinni.
Természetesen ezekkel a megállapításokkal bőven lehet vitatkozni (mint ahogy azzal is, hogy MacIntyre mennyire szilárdan állítja őket), ám a disputát megnehezítheti, hogy ha a teológia szókészletével szállnak szembe egy filozófiai szókészlettel, mert ez óhatatlanul egymás mellett elbeszéléshez vezet. show less

Imagine that science as a discipline had been nearly erased from human memory. Now imagine that after a great deal of time, a new discipline arises, calling itself science and using surviving scraps of the old tradition. The new tradition, however, has utterly lost the context that gave those scraps meaning. What now passes for science bears little resemblance to our empirical study of repeatable, observable phenomena; and more resemblance to dogma completely untethered both from its source show more or from any intelligible reason or purpose.

This startling analogy is the condition in which MacIntyre finds our modern, Western society with regard to morality. The moral framework in which this society operates borrows mightily from its predecessor: the classical morality of Aristotle as synthesized with and modified by the European Christian tradition. In MacIntyre's view, the philosophers of the Enlightenment tried to do the impossible: to justify a moral code derived from their ancestors in the entirely new and alien terms of Enlightenment individualism. The inevitable failure of that project spawned the emotivist Western world we know today, a world in which we use inherited virtue words (e.g., "justice," "integrity," "loyalty") which bear no intrinsic meaning in our brave new world.

Where all our individualistic moral codes are laws unto themselves, there is nothing left to the moral marketplace but the brute application of the will to power. For in this post-Enlightenment kaleidoscope of equally irrational and equally sovereign moralities governed by nothing other than the feelings of their proponents, the ability of the individual will to assert its dominance is the only true morality left beneath the shared, polite fiction that a transcendent morality of any other kind exists.

MacIntyre's diagnosis of Western moral malaise is, in my opinion, unassailable. I have questions about his proposed solution; namely, to rehabilitate and reinterpret a Thomistic Aristotelian tradition of a teleological morality (i.e., a morality governed by specific end goals) where virtue is found in the balancing of the internal goods springing from acts conducive to the good of a whole human life against the multiply embedded narratives in which we live our historical lives. I'm not sure he escapes his own critiques of arbitrary morality, although he himself would identify the Aristotelian tradition merely as the best moral framework we’ve discovered so far. Questions about solutions aside, though, I can't imagine a better critique of our cultural moment; and highly recommend this work for that reason alone. show less

Is there anything left to be said about After Virtue? With this book, Alasdair MacIntyre brought Aristotelian-style virtue ethics back into the modern conversation. It is a true classic, still quoted and built upon today, almost forty years after its original publication date.

After Virtue falls into two parts. The first half of the book is deconstructive. MacIntyre carefully explains how the ethical problems of our time cannot be answered from within our post-Enlightenment framework. The show more ethical landscape today resembles the ruins of a once great culture. We have bits and pieces of ethical material from the past, but no historical context with which to apply them. Without context there can be no ethical progress beyond the emotivism of the day.

"[M]oral judgments are linguistic survivals from the practices of classical theism which have lost the context provided by these practices" (60).

The second half of After Virtue is constructive. Now that the problem is diagnosed, MacIntyre prescribes Aristotelian medicine. Humans are social creatures, narrative construed toward a telos or goal. It is through the practice of virtues within a community that humans mature and become the sort of people who are able to encounter the moral quandaries of the day.

It is difficult to overstate the value of this book. After Virtue is one carefully argued perspective in which each of the 286 pages adds value. It is multidisciplinary, combining philosophical argument with sociological and historical context. Despite its age, I found myself continually reflecting on current political and social events through MacIntyre's lens.

This is not a Christian book per se, but it has serious implications for the church. This is the foundation on which Stanley Hauerwas has based his ethical perspective. Pastors who wish to understand the moral makeup of the world and the church would do well to revisit this venerable volume. show less

A Brief Note on Nietzschean Genealogy and How it Relates to MacIntyre's Project

The thing that impressed me most with MacIntyre’s great work (the so-called 'Trilogy' of "After Virtue", then "Whose Justice?, Which Rationality?", and finally, this book, "Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition") is his discussion of the importance of ‘coherence’ in a Tradition. By ‘coherence’ I mean (and I believe he means something like this too) that those show more adept in the philosophical basis of any tradition, though they cannot answer everything, can agree on what the fundamental questions are and how one methodologically proceeds to attempt to answer them within a given tradition. ...Philosophical coherence, it seems, even in this limited methodological sense, demands that the modern world must (somehow) become one, that is to say, it must have only one Tradition. I would add that since MacIntyre maintains that there can be, and indeed must be, many differences of opinion between adherents of a tradition, that it follows that this 'Trilogy' must not be understood as a call for a single World State or society. A successfully universal world-tradition will have many different 'flavors' amongst many different peoples and polities.

The previous book in this Trilogy was titled "Whose Justice? Which Rationality?" And oh God! Those are indeed the questions today since there are so many incommensurable philosophical and religious traditions... But if there can be no adequate understanding between rival theories, as MacIntyre is often in that earlier book at pains to show, then - what? Well, then one wonders exactly how we fragmented late moderns can choose the Aristotelian-Thomist Tradition (as MacIntyre certainly wants) except by a Nietzschean act of Will. It would still seem that one cannot initially base practical activity (or lived choices) upon mere theory. Just as Plato wrote a Prelude to the Law (I am, of course, alluding to the late dialogue, "The Laws") that was itself not merely a law, and Hegel wrote a Preface to his "Phenomenology" that was not, and could not possibly be, entirely phenomenological, - so too one suspects that MacIntyre is here forced to write a 'preamble' to a 'hegemonic' Thomist Tradition that is not fully Thomist.

I understand these remarks, btw, to be more a comment on the inability of philosophical theory, any philosophical theory, to radically ground itself than a specific criticism of the position of MacIntyre. No theory can ever radically ground itself; thus one always proceeds to theory 'X', certainly in the beginning, in a non-'X' manner. ...Always. And with those comments I perhaps reveal myself to be an adherent (I hope a very skeptical adherent) of the 'postmodern tradition' (a genuine existing Contradictio in terminis, if you can believe that there is such a thing!) that our author herein designates as Genealogy. And our postmodern genealogists have pitched their tents precisely here, - on the question of origins. At the beginning of anything one always finds something else...

The Traditions that our author delineates in this book ("Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry") are Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition. Each of these three traditions also, for purposes of explication, has a designated 'proof' text: they are, respectively, the fabled Ninth Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Nietzsche's "Zur Genealogie der Moral", and Pope Leo XIII' encyclical 'Aeterni Patris'. I honestly found comparing these three specific positions a bit curious. What MacIntyre designates as Encyclopaedia (Liberalism) and Tradition (Catholicism) have produced societies in which one can live and they have also produced great civilizations. Genealogy can certainly never do either. It is, at bottom, only a critical method, a surgeons scalpel, a weapon. Encyclopaedia and Tradition can legitimately be judged 'good or bad' and 'true or false'. Regarding genealogy, like the scalpel or the weapon, one can only enquire whether or not it has been used appropriately...

Now, I do not mean to admit by this that Nietzsche is, or intends to be, merely a critic. What MacIntyre designates here as 'Genealogy' Nietzsche considered to be only part of the 'No-Saying' critical part of his work. Zarathustra was intended to be the 'Yes-Saying' affirmative part of his work. (Regarding that, see his "Ecce Homo", the section entitled 'Beyond Good and Evil'.) The 'Yes-Saying' part of Nietzsche's work MacIntyre entirely ignores. I suspect that our author found it both useful and pleasant to use genealogy as a stick to beat 'Encyclopaedia' about the head and then use 'Tradition' to show the glaring inadequacies of genealogy as a tradition that could successfully form a world in which we all could live. But again, for Nietzsche, genealogical critique was, and could only be, but half the story. In MacIntyre's defense one should add that since virtually all of postmodern criticism has almost entirely ignored Zarathustra (and its purport) that therefore MacIntyre was justified to do so too insofar as this book is intended as a critique of both our miserable postmodernity and its liberal pretensions.

Traditional Catholicism, modern Liberalism (and also its would-be transformative avatar, Socialism) are above all (or in the case of socialism, one day could be) societies that have both norms and ideals. One applies these norms to approach the ideal; and, when necessary, one revises norms in light of the ideal. This is progress within a tradition. But what happens when incommensurable traditions come into conflict? That is the question MacIntyre intends to answer in this book. 'Really-existing' Postmodernism has become, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, little more than a 'narrative system' (i.e., a way to speak about and navigate through) the several incommensurable traditions that in fact divide our secular world. Our author is admirably striving to put an end to that seemingly permanent division.

MacIntyre is, to his credit, entirely a Universalist. (As is every genuine philosopher.) There were ever only two possibilities for him: Socialism and Christianity. He eventually, after a a long process, decided upon Christianity. So why is the Gigantomachia (battle of the giants) that is enacted within this book engaged without the participation of Marxism (and its dialectic) as one of the antagonists? I suppose we will never know. Perhaps he feared that the Universalism of both the Church and Marxism would militate against his desired result? (Probably, he thinks that there is no Marxist moral tradition that is entirely distinct from liberalism and therefore it would be inappropriate in this study.) Yes, (for our author) Marxism and Christianity have many similarities. In his much earlier "Marxism and Christianity" we learn that both "Marxism and Christianity rescue individual lives from the insignificance of finitude" and this gives them reason to hope. He later says in this same early book that "Liberalism by contrast simply abandons the virtue of hope. For liberals the future has become the present enlarged."

After MacIntyre's acceptance of Christianity the main targets of his mature work has been both liberalism and postmodernism, with Marxism (for our author, the only other possibility) usually (but not always) ignored. So then, is postmodernism to be considered merely the déjà vu of liberalism? I for one don't think this can be consistently maintained. For instance, Christianity, liberalism and marxism all promise a better future. Yes, it is certainly true that liberalism merely promises an improved liberalism while both Christianity and Marxism promise a transformative future. But postmodernity promises nothing (and delivers it too!). It is the decadence of a liberalism that can no longer even hope to meaningfully change itself. Now, genealogy counters this promise of a 'better future' with the supposed discovery of a 'different past'. That is to say, the genealogist knows that he can trump any promised future with a new vision (i.e., a new narrative) of the past. And, of course, this new vision (as mere story) is always immediately available to everyone.

This is what makes genealogy so insidious an enemy. The various progressive positions have to eventually make actual improvements in the world; even Christianity (which technically promises a better future only in the next life) had many apocalyptic movements demanding a better life now. But the genealogists can create different narratives regarding the origins of any religion, regime, or revolution, and eventually, in the midst of some crisis, a story will grow in popularity and then (perhaps) go forth and change the world. Of course, this is what Nietzsche expected of his 'Zarathustra'. The different pasts 'discovered' (or invented) by genealogy erode the master narrative(s) of the dominant tradition(s) and thereby allow his 'Zarathustrian' world to rise.

Or so Nietzsche hoped. But the genealogy of the overwhelming majority of postmoderns derives mostly from Foucault, not Nietzsche. The difference between them is the difference between psychology and history. Nietzschean 'Psychology' is based on what he considers to be the facts of human nature. Having understood (to his own satisfaction) the inevitabilities of human nature, Nietzsche can display that serene confidence in his 'Zarathustra' that has so amazed and mystified commentators of all stripes. But again, the present postmodern understanding of genealogy has actually become an amalgam of Foucault, deconstruction and triumphal constructivism. Like liberalism, this road only leads (at best) to supposedly improved versions of itself. So it is this 'really existing' genealogy that MacIntyre intends herein to show can never lead to a world in which all could live. And of course he does so quite successfully.

This is a brilliant conclusion to a magnificent trilogy. I recently found time to revisit them. It is easily one of the best philosophical performances written in my lifetime. MacIntyre should be very proud. This review intended to focus merely on his treatment of genealogy and how said treatment might relate to his overall project of writing a history of moral inquiry itself. show less