That didn't last.
In 1983, he became a Roman Catholic in faith and a Thomist in philosophy, a “result of being convinced of Thomism while attempting to disabuse his students of its authenticity.” What impressed him, in part, was “that Aquinas—to an extent not matched by either Plato or Ayer—does not commit himself to accepting any particular answer to whatever question it is that he is asking, until he has catalogued all the reasonable objections to that answer that he can identify and has found what he takes to be sufficient reason for rejecting each of them. Following his example seems an excellent way of ensuring that I become adequately suspicious of any philosophical theses which I am tempted to accept.” No longer Karl Barth, Alasdair’s favorite twentieth-century theologian became Joseph Ratzinger.
He also broke up the Beatles, which is good.
5 comments:
I particularly liked this quote:
MacIntyre was proud never to have earned a PhD: “I won’t go so far as to say that you have a deformed mind if you have a PhD, but you will have to work extra hard to remain educated.”
I didn't know any of this about him, fascinating. I just recently read "After Virtue" after seeing it in a picture of someone's stack on twitter, and asked them about it. Took me a while, there's a lot there to digest. I had been meaning to ask you, Grim, if that book might be a good way point for the discussion of "what comes next?".
In a way I think it is the perfect book, because it disposes of all modern approaches to moral philosophy in favor of a return to virtue ethics. Insofar as one is still dealing with deontologists and utilitarian thinkers, it is a great place to start.
In another way, I don't know how many people need to read it. Continuing to spend time on refuting those failed approaches is time wasted. What would be best is if we could accept the validity of his critique of modernist moral philosophy, abandon it, and return to the ancient texts to begin again.
To which end, we might prefer to start on "what comes next?" with Aristotle.
It was useful to me, a layman, in organizing a lot of things I'd sort of come across or heard parts of but never really had it all laid out as a fully formed argument, so I found it very useful, regardless. I can see where it would be less useful to you. Do you think enough people have accepted that those approaches have failed? Seems like a lot of people hanging on to those ideas yet. The argument may still needs be made.
No, you’re right, far too many still prefer the modern approaches even though they are incoherent. It is definitely a good book for making that argument.
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