The Gaelic philosopher who wrote ‘one of the most influential books of our time'

Irish Times

16-06-2025

There are formative cultural experiences in all our lives. I'll never forget hearing
The Smiths
for the first time, watching The Breakfast Club, and reading Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue.
Alasdair who, I hear you say?
For fans of the Scottish philosopher, who died last month aged 96, his barnstorming book on the future of western thought felt like an intellectual coming-of-age.
'We have – very largely, if not entirely – lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality,' he wrote.
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It is not just that we are trapped in seemingly irreconcilable arguments about what's right and wrong. It's that we have lost touch with a shared language that can make reconciliation possible. So MacIntyre proclaimed in his book, first published in 1981, although that short precis of After Virtue doesn't nearly do it justice.
The British writer Kenan Malik describes After Virtue as a 'brilliant, bleak, frustrating and above all provocative' work, while Irish philosopher Joseph Dunne calls it 'a coruscating critique of the ills of modernity'.
MacIntyre was born in Glasgow to parents of Irish descent – 'who ensured that he learned Irish', Dunne points out. An 'active Trotskyite' for many years and a member of the Community Party in the UK, MacIntyre progressively moved away from Marx towards Aristotle and, in later life, converted to Catholicism. One constant throughout was a pride in his Gaelic roots.
Dunne, who taught philosophy at St Patrick's College,
Dublin City University
and closely engaged with MacIntyre's work, told The Irish Times that, 'in an earlier atheist phase', MacIntyre 'had identified himself as a 'Catholic atheist' on the grounds that 'only Catholics worshipped a God worth denying'.'
But what made After Virtue so special?
The book begins with an arresting image. Picture the world of science experiencing a 'catastrophe' whereby 'laboratories are burnt down' and no one can provide a convincing proof that two plus two does not equal five. Something similar has happened to moral philosophy, MacIntyre argued. As religious certainties faded away, and as we abandoned traditional belief systems, we have been left with purely emotional judgments on morality. In short, we cry 'hurrah' and 'boo' at one another without any common ground.
For MacIntyre the rot set in with the Enlightenment, and its promise of creating a moral framework divorced from history and community. The Enlightenment gave us two new ways of assessing ethical matters: human rights theory and utilitarianism. The former has strengthened recognition of individual freedom but it runs into trouble when competing rights clash.
Utilitarianism advocates doing whatever maximises benefit and minimises harm. Reimagined as 'effective altruism', it is the favourite ethic of tech bros who claim to be making the world a better place while acting like jerks.
MacIntyre called for a return to an earlier way of thinking known as virtue theory. This emphasises the need to cultivate characteristics like honesty, humility and compassion. In a unique and exhilarating twist, After Virtue wrapped this argument up in a wider critique of capitalism, the creeping managerialism of society and the coarsening of political language.
Central to Alasdair MacIntyre's thinking is to resurrect the ancient Greek notion of telos or 'purpose'
For someone who is hardly a household name, MacIntyre had an outsize influence on a generation of political scientists. In Malik's book The Quest for a Moral Compass: A Global History of Ethics, there are more references to MacIntyre than to George Berkeley, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Voltaire put together. But he has his critics too. Liberal commentator and author Mark Lilla says After Virtue 'turned out to be one of the most influential books of our time' – but not in a good way. 'By blurring the lines between intellectual history and philosophical argument, MacIntyre ... developed a compelling just-so story about how our dark world came to be,' Lilla writes in The Shipwrecked Mind.
For liberals like Lilla, we should double down on Enlightenment values, not back away from them. When faced with monsters trampling over international human rights law, we need a stronger response than appealing to virtues. We need a system for managing conflict, along with clear rules and punishments.
MacIntyre opens After Virtue with an epitaph to deceased ancestors: 'gus am bris an la', Scots Gaelic for 'until the day breaks'. The book also 'ends with a kind of prayer', Lilla observes. But prayer won't stop
Vladimir Putin
or
Binyamin Netanyahu
raining missiles down on civilians.
Ultimately, MacIntyre left room for debate over how we should rehabilitate our moral thinking. After Virtue does not close off the possibility of restoring virtue theory to its rightful place in our collective reasoning, while taking the best of what both human rights theory and utilitarianism have to offer.
Central to MacIntyre's thinking, however, is to resurrect the ancient Greek notion of telos or 'purpose'. The Enlightenment sidelined inquiry into purpose; searching for 'the meaning of life' itself became a figure of fun. But MacIntyre believed it was essential for humans to have a meaningful story about where they came from and where they're going. He insisted, as Dunne puts it, on 'the narrative structure of a human life'.
'I can only answer the question, 'What am I to do?',' MacIntyre wrote, 'if I can answer the prior question, 'Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?'.'
We have become accustomed to self-help books spoon-feeding us 'lessons for life'. But a proper work of philosophy inspires us to ask better questions.