Alasdair MacIntyre

Back to the Rough Ground is a philosophical investigation of practical knowledge, with major import for professional practice and the ethical life in modern society. Its purpose is to clarify the kind of knowledge that informs good practice in a range of disciplines such as education, psychotherapy, medicine, management, and law. Through reflection on key modern thinkers who have revived cardinal insights of Aristotle, and a sustained engagement with the Philosopher himself, it presents a radical challenge to the scientistic assumptions that have dominated how these professional domains have been conceived, practiced, and institutionalized.

Back to the Rough Ground is a philosophical investigation of practical knowledge, with major import for professional practice and the ethical life in modern society. Its purpose is to clarify the kind of knowledge that informs good practice in a range of disciplines such as education, psychotherapy, medicine, management, and law. Through reflection on key modern thinkers who have revived cardinal insights of Aristotle, and a sustained engagement with the Philosopher himself, it presents a radical challenge to the scientistic assumptions that have dominated how these professional domains have been conceived, practiced, and institutionalized.

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." Since that time, the book has been translated into more than fifteen foreign languages and has sold over one hundred thousand copies. 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. While he recognizes that his conception of human beings as virtuous or vicious needed not only a metaphysical but also a biological grounding, ultimately 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."

A Short History of Ethics is a significant contribution written by one of the most important living philosophers. For the second edition Alasdair MacIntyre has included a new preface in which he examines his book "thirty years on" and considers its impact. It remains an important work, ideal for all students interested in ethics and morality.

Alasdair MacIntyre explores some central philosophical, political and moral claims of modernity and argues that a proper understanding of human goods requires a rejection of these claims. In a wide-ranging discussion, he considers how normative and evaluative judgments are to be understood, how desire and practical reasoning are to be characterized, what it is to have adequate self-knowledge, and what part narrative plays in our understanding of human lives. He asks, further, what it would be to understand the modern condition from a neo-Aristotelian or Thomistic perspective, and argues that Thomistic Aristotelianism, informed by Marx's insights, provides us with resources for constructing a contemporary politics and ethics which both enable and require us to act against modernity from within modernity. This rich and important book builds on and advances MacIntyre's thinking in ethics and moral philosophy, and will be of great interest to readers in both fields.

Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the few professional philosophers whose writings span both technical analytical philosophy and those general moral or intellectual questions that laymen often suppose to be the province of philosophy but that are seldom discussed within its bounds. The unity of this book—made up both of original and previously published pieces—lies in its attempt to expose this dichotomy and to link beliefs and moral theories with philosophical criticism. The author successively criticizes Christianity, Marxism, and psychoanalysis for their failure to express the forms of thought and action that constitute our contemporary social life, and argues that a greater understanding of our complex world will require a more thorough inquiry into the philosophy of the social sciences.

MacIntyre gives the reader an extremely perceptive account of the role of religion in modern culture and society as a whole.Three convictions underlie this book. The first is that an educated Catholic laity needs to understand a good deal more about Catholic philosophical thought than it does now. The warring partisans on the great issues that engage our culture and politics presuppose the truth of some philosophical theses and the falsity of others.Second, argues MacIntyre, Catholic philosophy is best understood historically, as a continuing conversation through the centuries, in which we turn and return to the most important voices from our past.Third, philosophy is not just a matter of propositions affirmed or denied but of philosophers in particular cultural and social situations interacting with each other in their affirmations and denials, in their argumentative wrangling. This is the context for a book of vital importance and interest for anyone involved with education in a religious context. But from someone with MacIntyre's authority and reputation, the reader can expect something extremely perceptive about the role of religion in modern culture and society as a whole. The reader will not be disappointed.

Alasdair MacIntyre explores some central philosophical, political and moral claims of modernity and argues that a proper understanding of human goods requires a rejection of these claims. In a wide-ranging discussion, he considers how normative and evaluative judgments are to be understood, how desire and practical reasoning are to be characterized, what it is to have adequate self-knowledge, and what part narrative plays in our understanding of human lives. He asks, further, what it would be to understand the modern condition from a neo-Aristotelian or Thomistic perspective, and argues that Thomistic Aristotelianism, informed by Marx's insights, provides us with resources for constructing a contemporary politics and ethics which both enable and require us to act against modernity from within modernity. This rich and important book builds on and advances MacIntyre's thinking in ethics and moral philosophy, and will be of great interest to readers in both fields.

Highly controversial when it was first published in 1981, Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue has since established itself as a landmark work in contemporary moral philosophy. In this book, MacIntyre sought to address a crisis in moral language that he traced back to a European Enlightenment that had made the formulation of moral principles increasingly difficult. In the search for a way out of this impasse, MacIntyre returns to an earlier strand of ethical thinking, that of Aristotle, who emphasised the importance of 'virtue' to the ethical life. More than thirty years after its original publication, After Virtue remains a work that is impossible to ignore for anyone interested in our understanding of ethics and morality today.

During the mid-1950s, three books appeared which, while theologically unfashionable at the time, can now be seen to have pointed the way forward that theology had to take. New Essays in Philosophical Theology, edited by Antony Flew and Alasdair Maclntyre, has been available ever since, and has been in increasing demand. Religious Language, by Ian T. Ramsey, now Bishop of Durham, was out of print in England for a while, but has been reissued and is in a second new impression. Metaphysical Beliefs, on the other hand, was never reprinted. It consists of three long essays, by Stephen Toulmin on 'Contemporary Scientific Mythology'; by Ronald Hepburn on 'Poetry and Religious Belief'; and by Alasdair Maclntyre on 'The Logical Status of Religious Belief'. When the book first appeared, The Times Literary Supplement commented: 'This volume should be widely read and discussed. It is philosophical thinking at a high level, because it faces live issues, avoids asperity towards opponents, and should provoke the right kind of controversy.' More than ten years later, the same verdict still holds true

'What does it mean to be a human being?' Given this perennial question, Alasdair MacIntyre, one of America's preeminent philosophers, presents a compelling argument on the necessity and importance of philosophy. Because of a need to better understand Catholic philosophical thought, especially in the context of its historical development and realizing that philosophers interact within particular social and cultural situations, MacIntyre offers this brief history of Catholic philosophy. Tracing the idea of God through different philosophers' engagement of God and how this engagement has played out in universities, MacIntyre provides a valuable, lively, and insightful study of the disintegration of academic disciplines with knowledge. MacIntyre then demonstrates the dangerous implications of this happening and how universities can and ought to renew a shared understanding of knowledge in their mission. This engaging work will be a benefit and a delight to all readers.

'What does it mean to be a human being?' Given this perennial question, Alasdair MacIntyre, one of America's preeminent philosophers, presents a compelling argument on the necessity and importance of philosophy. Because of a need to better understand Catholic philosophical thought, especially in the context of its historical development and realizing that philosophers interact within particular social and cultural situations, MacIntyre offers this brief history of Catholic philosophy. Tracing the idea of God through different philosophers' engagement of God and how this engagement has played out in universities, MacIntyre provides a valuable, lively, and insightful study of the disintegration of academic disciplines with knowledge. MacIntyre then demonstrates the dangerous implications of this happening and how universities can and ought to renew a shared understanding of knowledge in their mission. This engaging work will be a benefit and a delight to all readers.

Where should an account of the virtues begin? In "Dependent Rational Animals", Alasdair MacIntyre argues that we should begin with those facts of vulnerability and disability, and of consequent dependence on others, to which moral philosophers have generally given insufficient attention, and with the animal nature of human beings - that which exhibits their kinship to members of other intelligent species. He argues that it is by reference to these that we become able to understand the part played in our lives both by the virtues of independent practical reasoning and by the virtues of an acknowledged dependence on others.

MacIntyre is one of the major British philosophers of the post-war years, and a convert to Roman Catholicism. Edith Stein was an intellectual of considerable importance in the period between the two World Wars. The fact that she was also canonised as a Saint is truly remarkable: a Jewish convert to Roman Catholicism, she died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. In this major study of Stein's development as a theologian and philosopher, MacIntyre reveals many of the fundamental issues in both disciplines and in their cross-fertilisation. Stein was a pupil of the phenomenological philosopher Edmund Husserl. She then sought in her own writing to interpret phenomenology in a Thomistic way. In this, she was as original and innovative as were the Catholic philosophers - such as Peter Geach and Elizabeth Anscombe - who made similar interpretations of the work of Wittgenstein in this country.

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." Since that time, the book has been translated into more than fifteen foreign languages and has sold over one hundred thousand copies. 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. While he recognizes that his conception of human beings as virtuous or vicious needed not only a metaphysical but also a biological grounding, ultimately 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."

How should we respond when some of our basic beliefs are put into question? What makes a human body distinctively human? Why is truth an important good? These are among the questions explored in this 2006 collection of essays by Alasdair MacIntyre, one of the most creative and influential philosophers working today. Ten of MacIntyre's most influential essays written over almost thirty years are collected together here for the first time. They range over such topics as the issues raised by different types of relativism, what it is about human beings that cannot be understood by the natural sciences, the relationship between the ends of life and the ends of philosophical writing, and the relationship of moral philosophy to contemporary social practice. They will appeal to a wide range of readers across philosophy and especially in moral philosophy, political philosophy, and theology.

How should we respond when some of our basic beliefs are put into question? What makes a human body distinctively human? Why is truth an important good? These are among the questions explored in this 2006 collection of essays by Alasdair MacIntyre, one of the most creative and influential philosophers working today. Ten of MacIntyre's most influential essays written over almost thirty years are collected together here for the first time. They range over such topics as the issues raised by different types of relativism, what it is about human beings that cannot be understood by the natural sciences, the relationship between the ends of life and the ends of philosophical writing, and the relationship of moral philosophy to contemporary social practice. They will appeal to a wide range of readers across philosophy and especially in moral philosophy, political philosophy, and theology.

Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the most creative and important philosophers working today. This volume presents a selection of his classic essays on ethics and politics collected together for the first time, focussing particularly on the themes of moral disagreement, moral dilemmas, and truthfulness and its importance. The essays range widely in scope, from Aristotle and Aquinas and what we need to learn from them, to our contemporary economic and social structures and the threat which they pose to the realization of the forms of ethical life. They will appeal to a wide range of readers across philosophy and especially in moral philosophy, political philosophy, and theology.

A Short History of Ethics has over the past thirty years become a key philosophical contribution to studies on morality and ethics. Alasdair MacIntyre writes a new preface for this second edition which looks at the book 'thirty years on' and considers its impact. A Short History of Ethics guides the reader through the history of moral philosophy from the Greeks to contemporary times. MacIntyre emphasises the importance of a historical context to moral concepts and ideas showing the relevance of philosophical queries on moral concepts and the importance of a historical account of ethics.A Short History of Ethics is an important contribution written by one of the most important living philosophers. Ideal for all philosophy students interested in ethics and morality.

A Short History of Ethics has over the past thirty years become a key philosophical contribution to studies on morality and ethics. Alasdair MacIntyre writes a new preface for this second edition which looks at the book 'thirty years on' and considers its impact. A Short History of Ethics guides the reader through the history of moral philosophy from the Greeks to contemporary times. MacIntyre emphasises the importance of a historical context to moral concepts and ideas showing the relevance of philosophical queries on moral concepts and the importance of a historical account of ethics.A Short History of Ethics is an important contribution written by one of the most important living philosophers. Ideal for all philosophy students interested in ethics and morality.