Alasdair MacIntyre

Benjamin Franks’ recent contribution to the field of anarchist political philosophy, what he calls ‘prefigurative or practical anarchism’, is introduced partly in response to the critique of ‘meta-narratives’ made by writers such as Todd May and Saul Newman. Meta-narratives, they argue, are both, in theory, epistemologically suspect and, in practice, repressive of alternative conceptions of the good. This is because meta-narratives assert the validity of one goal or end for human society and/or individuals and one morally justifiable mode of acting to achieve this, thus risking the exclusion of other goals and forms of moral agency. Framing social and political action within meta-narratives of human nature is regarded by May and Newman, the founders of ‘postanarchist’ theory, as an essential characteristic of the classical anarchisms of the nineteenth century. While Franks, along with many others, is critical of the postanarchist attack on classical anarchisms, he nonetheless shares their rejection of meta-narratives and teleology. The practical anarchism he proposes aims to be sympathetic to this concern and does so by adopting and modifying the social practice theory found in the work of Alasdair MacInture. This may come as a surprise given MacIntyre’s position as one of the strongest contemporary defenders of the notion of a telos of human life (i.e., that human life has a natural and right end), but it is this exact feature that Franks’ account of social practices eliminates. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to assess the consequences of the rejection of meta-narratives and telos for Franks’ practical anarchism. Ultimately, I will show that without a teleological approach, practical anarchism collapses into moral relativism and weakens the definition of ‘anarchism’ to such an extent that it becomes useless.

The short title of this work: Autobiography, Time, and Narrative in Philosophy and Psychology, expresses the principal topics discussed. The temporal dispersion of an individual's actions throughout life, makes their unification and stability in purpose challenging, as such temporal separation of human actions makes it difficult to view the effects and significance of particular acts, and their long-term impact. Fortunately, narrative self-understanding and autobiographical thinking in orienting the whole human life, resolves the challenge posed by temporal dispersion. In this work, Ogunyemi explores the relationship between the anthropological theories of the dynamics of temporality with narrative self-understanding that are developed from an Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy, and recent theories in psychology and neurosciences, through her reading and interpretation of contemporary authors. She presents scientific observations related to habit formation and self-improvements that are congruent with philosophy. MacIntyre as well as other philosophers often analyzed the validity of psychology's methods and frameworks and Ogunyemi contributes to this dialogue by pointing out similarities between autobiographical temporality seen in disparate fields. She explores concepts of narrative philosophy from the first-person perspective, and makes a synthesis of elements of autobiographical temporality which could form an anthro-pological framework for observations made from research in different subspecialties of contemporary psychology and neurosciences. Her interdisciplinary approach highlights prospects of mutual enrichment between different fields. The need for interdisciplinary studies, such as this one, is ever increasing and urgent since the development of particular sciences, that promote human flourishing today, requires a deeper understanding of the human being in his totality. Omowumi Ogunyemi obtained her first degree in medicine and surgery. She has worked as a medical practitioner in various hospitals in Nigeria including The Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Lagos, where she managed patients with substance induced disorders. She holds a licentiate degree and a doctorate in philosophy from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome.

While claiming that liberalism is the dominant political theory and practice of modernity, this book provides two alternative post-modern theoretical approaches to the political. Concentrating on Nietzsche's and Foucault's work it offers a novel interpretation of their genealogical projects. It argues that genealogy can be applied to analyze different forms of cultural kitsch vis-à-vis the dominant political institutions of consumer capitalism. The problem with consumer capitalism is not so much that it exploits individuals, but that it fosters cheap human existence saturated with the artefacts of kitsch. Contrasting genealogy with hermeneutic philosophy, it calls for a renewal of hermeneutics within the Thomistic tradition.

I describe both the German Aristotelian revival and the Anglo-Saxon virtue-ethics approach and argue that there are some reasons why the Grotian dismissal of Aristotelian practical rationality had finally to be overcome. I suggest that such reasons in turn depend on deeper changes in the structure of the building of  modern philosophy, first among them those carried by the critique of Cartesian foundationalism staged by such odd bed-fellows as Peirce, Wittgenstein, Husserl, and Heidegger, adding quasi-Thomists such as Anscombe and Geach. This may account for the apparently unexpected normative turn which took place in the same years (shortly after or before 1958) in two different and comparatively insulated contexts such as Germany and  the Anglo-Saxon world.

Som a l’inici del segle XXI. Mirem al nostre voltant i descobrim que tota moral és essencialment irracional... Tota? No! Una tradició moral ha estat capaç de superar els embats de la història; la tradició moral aristotèlica es perfila capaç de superar la crítica nietzscheana.

A hypocrite is a habitual liar who intentionally deceives others by means of his behavior. In addition to being intrinsically evil, hypocrisy often leads to scandal, causing others to lose their faith—perhaps justifiably—for two reasons. The first forms the basis of Arguments to Absurdity, which contend, on the basis of the principle that ought-implies-can, that hypocrisy is defeasible evidence of the irrationality of a doctrine or practice. The second generates Arguments from Betrayal. On the basis of an “extended” or communitarian view of the self, these arguments contend that religious hypocrisy confronts believers with a tragic dilemma: that because religious loyalty is justified by the goodness of its object, hypocrisy requires us to sacrifice either our humanity (to remain loyal) or our character and identity (by abandoning our loyalty or faith). After articulating these arguments, this paper evaluates their cogency on both philosophical and theological grounds.

This article explores the ties existing between the philosophies of Alasdair MacIntyre and Hans-Georg Gadamer. A comparison between these two contemporary authors shows that they diverge fundamentally as to the role accorded to language in their thinking. For Gadamer, language occupies the place royale. MacIntyre doesn’t accord it the same role and, in so doing, intends to restore metaphysics to its place of honor. Gadamer is felt to have masked the roles of both theoria and metaphysics in Aristotle’s philosophy. That said, the convergences between the two philosophers are quite numerous. This article studies them in detail. Essentially, they have to do with the central role of ethos for both of them. The comparison concludes with a particular focus on one last divergence. If they are very close to one another in measuring the influence of ethos on all human inquiry, they ultimately diverge as to the telos of that inquiry, a sign of their different understandings of language.

This chapter draws heavily on some of my recent work (Barry, 2012) in which I have discussed the ideas of Alasdair MacIntyre and Vaclav Havel and what these two thinkers can contribute to green political theory. Here, I wish to extend the discussion and further develop that conversation. First a qualifier. What is presented here is introductory, ground clearing and therefore necessarily suggestive (as well as extremely under-developed).
That is, it is the start of a new area of exploration rather than an analysis based on any exhaustive and comprehensive knowledge of both thinkers. In this respect, it is green reading of both MacIntyre and Havel, a movement from green theory towards the latter rather than in the opposite direction.Scholars of both MacIntyre and Havel will no doubt find much to disagree with perhaps in what follows, based as this chapter is on both an incomplete review of the full scope of the work of each thinker, coupled with an at best partial or novice’s understanding of the full complexity of their thought.
Part I explores Havel’s thought with a particular emphasis on his ethicised notion of political action and critique (‘living in truth’) and his focus on the centrality of dissent (both intellectually and in practice) as central to political critique and action. Part II offers an overview of MacIntyre interpreted as a putative green thinker, with a particular emphasis on his ideas of dependence and vulnerability. Part III attempts to draw some common
themes together from both thinkers in terms

Esta investigação, partindo do diagnóstico da modernidade empreendido por Alasdair MacIntyre, destina-se a avaliar a possibilidade de conciliação entre o discurso universalizante dos direitos humanos e a ética particularista sustentada pelo autor citado a partir do referencial ético aristotélico. A convergência entre os bens individuais, consubstanciados em direitos, e o bem comum, componente essencial da prática e do pensamento éticos, pode representar relevante contri-buição teórica no campo de estudos dos direitos humanos. Neste trabalho, dada a limitação da sua natureza, intentou-se analisar os três problemas intrínsecos à concepção de direitos, conforme a perspectiva de MacIntyre: a) a ideia de que sujeitos de direitos são indivíduos morais autônomos e plenamente independentes; b) a separação do bem individual do bem comum; c) a deflação da razão práticacomunitária, em relação à racionalidade individual. O trabalho empreendido tevecomo resultado uma exposição analítica dos pontos de contraste entre a pers-pectiva dos direitos humanos e a ética conforme compreendida por MacIntyre,necessária para preparar bases de uma possível reconciliação entre ambas.

O objetivo deste artigo é levar a perspectiva filosófica da vida humana como narrativa para o projeto humanista da pesquisa em direito e literatura. Para isso se fará uma aproximação entre o romance Cadernos da Casa Morta e os escritos do Método APAC; em seguida, será tratada a perspectiva narrativa da vida humana em sua relação com a literatura. Por fim, serão consideradas objeções ao projeto humanista. Conclui-se pela possibilidade do diálogo entre direito e literatura desde que se reconheça a autonomia das duas áreas.

The three main ethical theories in Western philosophy can be used as a framework from which to bring out the features of Buddhist ethics; hermeneutical questions regarding the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of comparison; a consideration of Buddhist ethics as virtue ethics, centring around the notions of practices, narratives, and traditions, as proposed by
MacIntyre, including a discussion of relativism in the context of naturalism, the fact/value gap, and cognitivism/non-cognitivism; a critique of consequentialism including a discussion of Goodman and Singer on altruism and compassion, agent-neutrality, and personhood, especially the bodhisattva-ideal; a critique of deontology that argues that there are no moral absolutes, and that only the wise can establish in a particular situation what is right, that is, what leads to a more awakened state. Conclusion: a discussion of why it is fruitful to see Buddhist ethics as a member of the family of (neo-Aristotelian) virtue ethical theories.

Este artigo trata da concepção das virtudes na sociedade homérica e das novas concepções na Atenas do século V a.C, a partir de Alasdair MacIntyre e Arthur Adkins. Tem como hipótese que as mudanças sociais e culturais decorrentes do surgimento das cidades ocasionaram uma crise dos valores tradicionais homéricos. Sobre a moralidade do período homérico, trata-se principalmente dos conceitos de bom (agathós) e virtude (areté). Sobre a discordância moral, abordam-se as concepções sofista e platônica das virtudes. Conclui-se que os desacordos de difícil solução a respeito do conteúdo dos valores morais não são um problema tipicamente moderno.

To state that there is no 'single' role of the architect today is to state the obvious. Particularly due to the crisis, the role the architect inhibits varies from person to person, from well-known roles to interesting and surprising new roles in society. To discuss the nowadays diversity of roles that can be taken therefore is used in this introductory paper used as a starting point to reflect on the specificity of the profession. This reflection always needs to be a theory of practice (Bourdieu).This paper is written as an introduction to a series of reflections written by post graduate students from The Berlage Advanced Studies in Architecture and Urbanism (2015)

Mediation is increasingly regarded as a nascent profession. This raises some important questions about how the mediation profession should be structured and governed. This article distinguishes two models of professional ethics and considers their appropriateness for mediation. The first model, which I call the 'regulatory model', gives a central role to professional associations in formulating, applying and enforcing ethical codes of conduct. This model has been adopted by the legal profession in Australia and elsewhere. The second model, which I call the 'practice model', views a profession as a community of practice where ethical standards emerge and change organically over time. These standards may be codified, but are mainly enforced through social pressure. I develop the practice model through reference to the concepts of practice and tradition in the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. I then explore the implications of the two models by considering how they might respond to ethical breaches by practitioners suffering from mental illness, before considering their suitability for the mediation community. I contend that the practice model has important advantages over the regulatory model as a framework for mediation ethics.

Recorrido histórico-filosófico de la filosofía de inspiración católica. Un libro dónde uno puede hacerse cargo de las raíces y el desarrollo de esta tradición. Se dedica especial atención a: Agustín de Hipona, Anselmo de Canterbury y Tomás de Aquino. Y se tienen en cuenta las aportaciones del Magisterio de la Iglesia. ¿Qué queda hoy de esa tradición? ¿Cómo puede contribuir a la formación de la cultura contemporánea?

In this paper, I engage with the question of friendship's possibility. There is initial clarification of the meaning of the question along two lines: first, the kind of possibility in view; second, what the question, then, amounts to. These clarifications result in understanding the question to be an attempt to form a dialectical oscillation between considering the human being as ethical (or normative) and political. Shortly thereafter, I explicate the Aristotelian and Thomistic account of friendship, chiefly through the work of Daniel Schwartz, in reference to this previous dialectical oscillation. This perspective is encountered with various difficulties from Alasdair MacIntyre's account of the fragmented status of the moral life in After Virtue to Martin Heidegger's account of authenticity (and more specifically, authentic-being-with-one-another) in Being and Time. These considerations culminate in an attempt to justify the recognition of friendship's possibility without a full ability to explicate the 'how' of its possibility by recourse to Ludwig Wittgenstein's idea of ethics as transcendental in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to present an alternative grounding for a narrative unity of life.

Στόχος μου στην μελέτη αυτή είναι να εξετάσω την έννοια του υποκειμένου, όπως αυτή αναλύεται στην ηθική φιλοσοφία του Alasdair MacIntyre και ειδικότερα στη θεωρία που αναπτύσσει στο έργο του After Virtue αναφορικά με τις έννοιες της κοινότητας, της πρακτικής, της παράδοσης και της αφηγηματικής ενότητας της ανθρώπινης ζωής. Ο MacIntyre, επικαλούμενος την αριστοτελική τελεολογική θεωρία, προβάλλει την έννοια της «αφηγηματικής ενότητας της ανθρώπινης ζωής», υποστηρίζοντας ότι, καθώς πάντοτε ορίζουμε τον εαυτό μας σε σχέση με τους άλλους ανθρώπους, η έννοια της προσωπικής ταυτότητας συνδέεται άμεσα με αυτήν της συλλογικής καθώς και με τη συμμετοχή μας σε μία κοινή ζωή, αφού ο άνθρωπος, στις πράξεις του και στις πρακτικές του, όπως επίσης και στις μυθοπλασίες του, είναι κυρίως ένα ζώο που λέει ιστορίες, ένας αφηγητής ιστοριών που στοχεύουν στην αλήθεια. Οι άνθρωποι προσδιορίζουν τις πράξεις και τις εμπειρίες τους με το να δημιουργούν αφηγήματα για τον εαυτό τους και τους άλλους. Κατά τον MacIntyre, όλοι μας, καθώς προσπαθούμε να προσδιορίσουμε τον εαυτό μας, βλέπουμε τη ζωή μέσα από μια ιστορία, γινόμαστε το υποκείμενο ενός ιδιόμορφου ιστορικού αφηγήματος που είναι αποκλειστικά δικό μας και κανενός άλλου. Μέσω της έννοιας της «αφηγηματικής ενότητας της ανθρώπινης ζωής» ο MacIntyre επικαλείται την έννοια του τέλους, ακολουθώντας τον Αριστοτέλη σύμφωνα με τον οποίο «ο άνθρωπος είναι φύσει πολιτικό ζώο» και η πόλη αποτελεί μία φυσική πολιτική οργάνωση. Υποστηρίζει ότι δεν είναι δυνατό να δικαιολογήσουμε την πολιτική οργάνωση χωρίς να κάνουμε αναφορά στους κοινούς σκοπούς της κοινότητας και ούτε επίσης είναι δυνατόν να συλλάβουμε την ύπαρξή μας και να διαμορφώσουμε την προσωπική μας ταυτότητα χωρίς να κάνουμε αναφορά στους ρόλους μας ως πολίτες, συμμετέχοντας σε μία κοινή ζωή. Οπωσδήποτε, η αντίληψη που αυτός εισάγει της αφηγηματικής ενότητας της ανθρώπινης ζωής στο πλαίσιο ενός ιδιόμορφου προσωπικού ιστορικού αφηγήματος «που ανήκει μόνο σε εμάς και σε κανέναν άλλο», ενώ αποτελεί μία ενδιαφέρουσα προσέγγιση της προσωπικής ταυτότητας του κοινωνικού υποκειμένου, παραμένει όμως παρόλα αυτά ευάλωτη ως ερμηνεία σε σχέση με την πολιτική δημόσια σφαίρα δράσης του υποκειμένου αυτού, την πορεία του οποίου επιχειρεί να εξηγήσει μέσα στον χρόνο της προσωπικής του ζωής. Είναι αλήθεια ότι ορίζουμε την ενσυνείδητη εμπειρία μας με το να κατασκευάζουμε αφηγήματα για τον εαυτό μας και για τους ανθρώπους με τους οποίους συναναστρεφόμαστε. Το αφήγημα κυριαρχεί στη ζωή μας, υπό την έννοια ότι η εμπειρία της συνείδησής μας δεν συνδέεται απλώς με μία ποικιλία κάποιων προσωπικών ιστοριών που βιώνουμε μέσα σε ένα κοινωνικό και πολιτιστικό πλαίσιο, αλλά, στην πραγματικότητα, κυριαρχείται από το αφήγημα αυτό, από τις ιστορίες αυτές που φτιάχνουμε για τους εαυτούς μας. Ίσως, όμως, η προσέγγιση αυτή του MacIntyre προς αναζήτηση του «αυθεντικού» εαυτού μας, να βρίσκεται πιο κοντά στη νιτσεϊκή θεώρηση του υποκειμένου απ’ ό, τι ο ίδιος είναι διατεθειμένος να ομολογήσει. Ο MacIntyre, και σε αυτήν την περίπτωση, όπως και σε άλλες, μας πρόσφερε ποικίλα ενδιαφέροντα ιστορικά, κοινωνιολογικά και ψυχολογικά επιχειρήματα για τον Εαυτό και την αφηγηματική του ταυτότητα, αλλά απέτυχε να μας δώσει κάποιο, πειστικό τουλάχιστον, φιλοσοφικό επιχείρημα για το πολιτικό δεσμευμένο υποκείμενο, όπως εκείνος το εκλαμβάνει, πάντοτε βέβαια σε αντίθεση με αυτό που ονομάζει «αδέσμευτο καντιανό».

In an effort to consider what the U.S. can do to mitigate threats to the relatively new battlefield of cyberspace, this chapter calls readers' attention to how critical infrastructure and software breaches often happen. Next, the chapter engages with questions regarding who can help us to learn from the breaches further. An answer is provided in light of the ideal type of the 'Cyber Leader'-defined herein as someone who demonstrates craft expertise in the practice of cybersecurity (construed in light of MacIntyrean Business Ethics) to promote the internal goods of privacy and security. A partial account of what virtues cyber leaders require is also sketched before chapter conclusions are drawn.

This book is a collection of published and new essays responding to MacIntyre’s critique of Kierkegaard and exploring the interfaces between Kierkegaard’s thought on moral agency and MacIntyre’s neo-Aristotelian ethics. The volume includes responses by Alasdair MacIntyre and Philip Quinn.  This book has become a standard text in Kierkegaard studies.

Gordon D. Marino Vll Page 14. viii Contents PART II: MACINTYRE AND KIERKEGAARD TODAY 129 6. Reason in Ethics: Maclntyre and Kierkegaard 131 Anthony Rudd 7. Neither Aristotle nor Nietzsche 151 Richard Johnson 8. After Paganism: Kierkegaard, Socrates, and the ...

Explorative empirical research on the business school ethos. How do you learn to think and act if you study business? What is your learned perception of management, corporations and markets? With the use of MacIntyre, Hegel and Aristotle, this book offers an empirically-informed philosophical understanding of business schools.

This paper contrasts five contemporary political philosophies – neutralism, postmodernism, pluralism, anarchism, and patriotism – and argues that the latter is superior. This is because of how patriotism relates to the various political ideologies, including liberalism, conservatism, socialism, nationalism, feminism, and so on. A new, patriotic conception of the political spectrum is then advanced, one based on how people should respond to conflict: those on the left would have us do so with conversation; those in the centre with negotiation; and those on the right with force.

This is a new version of the paper originally published in Public Affairs Quarterly 15, no. 3 (July 2001): 193–217; and as chapter 1 of my Patriotic Elaborations: Essays in Practical Philosophy (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009).

English: Referring to the classical philosophies of subjectivity (Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Schelling) as well as to the narratology which has its origins in the so called narrative turn in the humanities the author discusses contemporary conceptions of the narrative identity: hermeneutical (A. MacIntyre, Ch. Taylor, P. Ricoeur) and naturalistic (D. Dennett, M. Schechtman, D. DeGrazia). She proves a thesis that this narrative subject which contains pluralistic, chronological and social elements is able to act and make decisions though it does not fulfill the criteria of a strong, Hegelian rationality and can achieve self-understanding only on the indirect way of a tale to which it is reduced. It is so called empirical self in which a substantial unity is replaced by the unity of a narrative form and someone`s own autobiographical story.

Polish: Nawiązując do klasycznych filozofii podmiotowości (Kartezjusz, Kant, Hegel, Schelling) i do narratologii, która ma swoje źródła w tzw. zwrocie narratywistycznym autorka omawia współczesne koncepcje tożsamości narracyjnej: hermeneutyczne (A. MacIntyre, Ch. Taylor, P. Ricoeur) oraz naturalistyczne (D. Dennett, M. Schechtman, D. DeGrazia). Broni tezy, że ten narracyjny, uwzględniający elementy pluralistyczne, czasowe i społeczne podmiot nie przestaje być zdolny do działania i podejmowania decyzji, pomimo iż nie spełnia kryteriów tzw. mocnej, absolutyzującej racjonalności typu heglowskiego i osiąga samorozumienie jedynie na pośredniej drodze opowieści, z którą jest tożsamy. Jest to ja empiryczne, w którym substancjalna jedność jaźni zostaje zastąpiona przez jedność narracyjnej formy i własnej opowieści autobiograficznej.

This paper focuses on one of the major criticisms made to Aristotle's virtue ethics, namely that it lacks explicit moral action guidance. The same criticism has been addressed to later developments of virtue ethics. There have been several attempts to overcome this objection and to demonstrate that modern theories of virtue ethics do provide principles of right action. In this paper, I discuss mainly two such major attempts: the exemplarist approach and the virtue rules approach. My aim is to examine whether, if applied to Aristotle’s virtue ethics, these two approaches can provide a convincing answer to the criticism that Aristotle’s ethics does not offer explicit moral action guidance .

Alasdair MacIntyre's attack on the foundations of liberalism culminates in a stark choice between Nietzsche and Aristotle – a choice that is both unavoidable and absolute, because the liberal tradition, on MacIntyre's account, necessarily leads to Nietzsche, while to undertake a fundamental criticism of Nietzsche leads inexorably to the search for a standpoint outside liberalism – to the Aristotelian "tradition" of the virtues, he argues. I suggest reading Nietzsche in a way that places him within rather than in opposition to MacIntyr'es Aristotelian tradition, but the point is not merely to debate the interpretation of Nietzsche. Nietzsche not only has an "Aristotelian" theory of the subject, but an account that specifies the political dimension of any such theory, which is in danger of being obscured in MacIntyre's presentation.

This essay analyses three concerns that arise at the intersection of ethics and politics through situating the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, particularly his conception of the relationship between Christianity and Marxism, in the context of debates in the British New Left and drawing parallels and connections between these debates and the work of C. L. R. James and Black Marxism. The first concern is the modern suspension of ethics in the name of politics. The second is the relationship between structural and personal transformation. The third is how forms of social life exceed, but are always under pressure from, existing forms of political economy and how this concern shapes articulations of political agency outside of statist and property-based understandings of citizenship. I contend that addressing these concerns is a background condition for the emergence of a revolutionary consciousness.

Drawing on the work of Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre and Margaret Archer, this paper argues that the social contract theories relied on by many liberal thinkers to justify the exercise of political authority presuppose an individualist account of human nature that fails to appreciate the importance of caring relationships for the development and maintenance of moral agency.  The problem with liberal theories is not primarily, as many ethics of care theorists contend, their emphasis on rationality over emotion, but rather an emaciated view of rationality that lacks an inherent connection to substantive conceptions of the good, conceptions which are formed and sustained within a social context.

In this article, I explore the complex and unappreciated relationship
between the moral and political thought of Cicero and Adam Smith.
Cicero’s views about justice, propriety, and the selfish love of praise find
new expression in Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. I illustrate the
important ways in which Smith adopts – often without attribution –
Cicero’s precepts and moral judgments. I then go on to demonstrate
how Smith strips those Ciceronian conclusions from their original
justifying grounds in teleology and natural law. In their place, Smith
injects his own psychology based in sentiments as a new account of
why it is that we prefer virtue and justice to their opposites. By
exploring this relationship, I hope to shed light on an important
dynamic whereby modern thought has creatively adapted classical
moral and political concepts.

Aristotle is famous for stressing the impact of the legislation in the city-state on the moral development of its citizens. Also, it is crucial for Aristotle's political theory that a city-state is the kind of community that strives for a common good or purpose and that citizens are assessed according to their contribution to the realization of this common purpose. At first glance this looks pretty similar to Alasdair MacIntyre's approach to virtue ethics, especially with respect to the role of communities and questions of justice. These similarities notwithstanding, the following paper attempts to pinpoint some crucial differences. Above all, it turns out to be difficult for any community-relative conception of the virtues to integrate Aristotle's appeal to human nature. Moreover, one might question whether Aristotle would be willing to join MacIntyre in rejecting community-independent standards of justice. MacIntyre's interpretations of Aristotle are too complex to do justice to them in their entirety here. However the general contours of his reading seem to be clear.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s seminal work After Virtue,  first published in 1981, provided invaluable contributions to a resurgent virtue theory and critique of the Enlightenment project. The idea of narrative at heart of this proposal has also led to a new impulse in narratology, that is, the theory of a narrative ethics which is compatible with natural law theory along the lines of St. Thomas Aquinas. This proposal has the unique advantage of providing a coherent ethical theory that has intimate connections with, and implications in, anthropology and theology. Man, in this view, is understood as moral agent insofar as he is an author of his own story which he tells by his moral actions. Yet, it remains an open question as to how to ground this proposal metaphysically. In other words, how can one explain man as a fundamentally narrative being in a way that both accounts for the stability of his identity and nature as well as the dynamicity of the moral actions by which he defines himself in time?

The first stage of this paper will be to clarify where exactly this particular understanding of narrative ethics finds its place in the general meaning of narratology. In this light, though the proposed theory of narrative is rather recent, one will see that it is implicitly part of a long anthropological and ethical tradition, both in philosophy and in the arts.

The second stage seeks to explore the resources of Thomistic theory of being (esse) in order to provide a proposal for a metaphysical grounding of narrative ethics in answer to the question above. The contributions of C. Fabro and his interpretation of intensive and emergent esse are key to this proposal, in contrast to the extremes of a metaphysics that, by focusing on the essence, takes little account of dynamic operation, and to an existentialism by which man has absolute liberty and defines his very being by his moral choices.

I argue that the idea of virtue has become central after the Fifties in both Anglo-Saxon and German moral philosophy  and that this revival has come together with recognition of the legitimacy of discussion of issues in normative ethics, something that philosophers both on the Continent and in the Anglo-Saxon world used to overlook in the first half of the twentieth-century. I point at examples such as Stuart Hampshire and Elizabeth Anscombe as proof of the centrality of virtue ethics in the first phase of the normative turn. I also argue that, far from being a radical alternative to ‘modern moral philosophy’ as its proponents believe, virtue ethics is precisely moral argument of the kind both Kantian ethics at its best and less dogmatic versions of utilitarianism have brought to the fore of philosophical discussion.

This chapter introduces non-expert readers, who are interested in the study of politics, to the basic philosophical debate over naturalism versus anti-naturalism. Specifically, it champions an interpretive approach to political science and contrasts this critically with the naturalist forms of reasoning and concept formation that currently dominate the discipline. By the end of the chapter, readers will have a clear idea of the concepts and forms of reasoning appropriate to anti-naturalist, interpretive political science, along with a sense of how to avoid naturalist pitfalls. This chapter also illustrates a number of its points with notable research from the political science literature.