Alasdair MacIntyre

I have arrived at Alasdair MacIntyre by a rather circuitous route. This is the book I'm reading now:

http://www.amazon.ca/After-Virtue-Theory-Second-Edition/dp/0268006113

Sadly, I took it out of the library, so I'm unable to underline and yellow-mark the passages that strike me as memorable and profound. On the other hand, if I could use a yellow marker, the pages would wind up almost entirely yellow.

MacIntyre has useful things to say about so many issues, I can hardly do more than commend him to your attention. He puts forward a consistent and intelligible philosophy that makes it possible to to discuss many issues in sensible and productive ways. These issues include:

• The bankruptcy of philosophy, bureaucracy, democracy, capitalism, communism and just about any other "ism" that you may be familiar with.
• The mis-reading of the history of philosophy in general.
• What it means to be a "person" and  the meaning of life in general.
• The hopeless attempt to define "universal" ethics without reference to culture and tradition.
• The forgotten role of myth, fiction and art in creating the self.

Among many other things, I'm grateful to MacIntyre for providing me with a clear way to answer those who confuse "Christianity" with the Christian tradition. I define myself as a Christian not because I chose to align myself with some particular "religion", but because I accept that I was born into a society that identifies itself as Christian. We are all familiar with stories of the Bible. We have all learned and doubted the image of the "Old Man In the Sky". Atheism, which defines itself against a certain brand of Christian "theism",  is as much a part of this tradition as the ideas of Martin Luthor. On the other hand, the ideas of American fundamentalists are outside of my tradition. In my tradition, the Bible is not regarded as  somehow written by God or a book of laws. It seems like only a certain strand of crazy American evangelicals regard the stories in that book as literal history. 

Like the traditions of the Pope and the Dali Lama, my tradition leaves matters of fact to Science. This still leaves a lot to be said about issues like justice and what sort of people we should desire to be. Of course, others will refer to their tradition as "Christian" and they are welcome to do so. MacIntyre provides a way to discuss matters like this without appealing either to physical violence or vapid relativism.

For the reader who is tempted to dive straight into the MacIntyre's "After Virtue" (bless you!), I suggest that a less painful and more productive way might be to re-trace the steps I followed to get there.

• Sandel's wonderful introductory course on Justice is a good place to start. Hopefully, this will dispel the common notion that philosophy is boring, pointless and irrelevant. Sandel helps his students to enter the practice of philosophy, to speak the language and appreciate the issues. 
• Sandel's Democracy's Discontent continues with Sandel's easy and approachable style. This book takes a close look at why the project of democracy, especially in the United States, seems to be coming unravelled. I think we all suspected this, but Sandel takes us through the history, the issues and events that brought us to this point. Aside from a huge "amen" to the basic premise of the book, the reader comes away with a renewed appreciation for the fact that political ideas don't stand on their own -- they have a history and cannot be appreciated without understanding that history. The second idea Sandel hammers home is just exactly is the current accepted political philosophy and how it gets us into so much trouble.
• E. H. Carr's What is History introduces is to the fact that all history is told from a given perspective. The Roman Empire seen through the lens of 2012 concerns is not the same as the Roman Empire of 1750. To many, this is a novel idea. Unless you have absorbed this concept, the historical narratives of Sandel and MacIntyre will make little sense.

The above "prerequisites" are all easy and entertaining. On the other hand, MacIntyre's books is densely argued and crawling with eye-popping insights. I found myself re-reading almost every sentence. I also found myself thinking back to the foundation laid in the above three books on every page. MacIntyre's central idea is that philosophy is grounded in history -- this will make no sense to the reader who has not had at least some exposure to the history which is referenced in almost every page of MacIntyre's work.

In all of this, I'm indebted to my nephew, friend and sparring partner, Jeff Ray. It is chiefly due to him that it has taken so much effort and research to prove that I'm right, after all :)