Traditions and Social Practices

Assignment: Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, Chapters 14 and 15

Chapters 14 and 15 of After Virtue move from MacIntyre’s diagnosis of modern moral confusion to his proposed way forward. The excerpts from our last class argue that our moral language has become fragmented. These chapters begin to explain what has been lost: a shared account of virtue. MacIntyre turns to ancient and medieval traditions, especially Aristotle, to show that virtues were once understood as qualities we need in order to become the kinds of people capable of living well. On this older view, virtues are not just private personality traits or personal values. They are habits of character that help us pursue genuine goods within the practices, communities, and relationships that shape a human life.

These chapters matter for our course because they help us see disagreement as more than a contest over whose opinion wins. MacIntyre wants us to ask what kind of people we are becoming as we argue, listen, judge, and respond to others. He suggests that our ability to reason together depends partly on virtues such as honesty, courage, patience, justice, humility, and constancy. Those virtues do not eliminate disagreement, but they make better disagreement possible. One key point is that thinking well is not only a mental skill; it is also a matter of formation. We learn to disagree better by becoming people who can name the goods at stake, recognize the traditions that shape us, and practice the virtues needed to pursue truth with others rather than merely defeat them.