After virtue : a study in moral theory / by Alasdair MacIntyre.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

MacIntyre, Alasdair C.

Contributor:

Project Muse.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethics.

Virtues.

Virtue.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xix, 286 pages)

Edition:

Third edition.

Place of Publication:

Notre Dame, Ind. : University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

When After Virtue first appeared in 1981, it was recognized as a significant and potentially controversial critique of contemporary moral philosophy. Newsweek called it "a stunning new study of ethics by one of the foremost moral philosophers in the English-speaking world." Now, twenty-five years later, the University of Notre Dame Press is pleased to release the third edition of After Virtue, which includes a new prologue "After Virtue after a Quarter of a Century."

In this classic work, Alasdair MacIntyre examines the historical and conceptual roots of the idea of virtue, diagnoses the reasons for its absence in personal and public life, and offers a tentative proposal for its recovery. While the individual chapters are wide-ranging, once pieced together they comprise a penetrating and focused argument about the price of modernity. In the Third Edition prologue, MacIntyre revisits the central theses of the book and concludes that although he has learned a great deal and has supplemented and refined his theses and arguments in other works, he has "as yet found no reason for abandoning the major contentions" of this book. He remains "committed to the thesis that it is only from the standpoint of a very different tradition, one whose beliefs and presuppositions were articulated in their classical form by Aristotle, that we can understand both the genesis and the predicament of moral modernity."

Contents:

A disquieting suggestion

The nature of moral disagreement today and the claims of emotivism

Emotivism: social content and social context

The predecessor culture and the Enlightenment project of justifying morality

Why the Enlightenment project of justifying morality had to fail

Some consequences of the failure of the Enlightenment project

'Fact', explanation and expertise

The character of generalizations in social science and their lack of predictive power

Nietzsche or Aristotle?

The virtues of heroic societies

The virtues of Athens

Aristotle's account of the virtues

Medieval aspects and occasions

The nature of the virtues

The virtues, the unity of a human life and the concept of a tradition

From the virtues to virtue and after virtue

Justice as a virtue: changing conceptions

After virtue: Nietzsche or Aristotle, Trotsky and St. Benedict.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [279]-281) and index.

Electronic reproduction. Baltimore, MD Available via World Wide Web.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Online version: MacIntyre, Alasdair C. After virtue.

ISBN:

9780268158781

0268158789

Publisher Number:

99986107515

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.