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Alasdair MacIntyre

Alasdair MacIntyre Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous Alasdair MacIntyre Quotes

“The bureaucratic manager, the consuming aesthete, the therapist, the protester and their numerous kindred occupy almost all the available culturally recognizable roles, the notions of the expertise of the few and of the moral agency of everyone are the presuppositions of the dramas which those characters enact. To cry out that the emperor had no clothes on was at least to pick on one man only to the amusement of everyone else; to declare that almost everyone is dressed in rags is much less likely to be popular.”

MenCharacterMoralRolesCryDramaClothesPicksNotionAvailableManagersAgencyOne ManAmusementConsumingExpertiseEmperorTherapistsRagsKindred
Book:After Virtue
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“What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without ground for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time.”

IfsMatterAgeAbleLastsFormWaitingCommunityDarkMoralVirtueStageHorrorIntellectualTraditionLocalsConstructionWhat MattersFrontiersCivilityGoverningDark AgesBarbariansMoral Life
Book:After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory
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“A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves out to achieve instead - often not recognizing fully what they were doing - was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming age of barbarism and darkness.”

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Author:Alasdair MacIntyre
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“A striking feature of moral and political argument in the modern world is the extent to which it is innovators, radicals, and revolutionaries who revive old doctrines, while their conservative and reactionary opponents are the inventors of new ones.”

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Book:A Short History of Ethics: A History of Moral Philosophy from the Homeric Age to the 20th Century
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“There ought not be two histories, one of political and moral action and one of political and moral theorizing, because there were not two pasts, one populated only by actions, the other only by theories. Every action is the bearer and expression of more or less theory-laden beliefs and concepts; every piece of theorizing and every expression of belief is a politcal and moral action.”

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Book:After Virtue
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