Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre
1929-2025 · Analytic Ethics · Prominent
MacIntyre wrote After Virtue to diagnose why moral argument had turned into shouting. We argue about right and wrong with broken pieces of older systems, so 'that is wrong' has shrunk to 'I disapprove.' He would rebuild ethics out of crafts and practices, out of the virtues each one demands, and out of a life you can tell as one story. All enquiry belongs to a tradition, he held, while truth stays objective.
Signature
The position MacIntyre is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Society
- leans Collectivism
- Ethics Basis
- Virtue
Positions on the 12 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (82 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Society
- leans Collectivism (16 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Universals
- leans Realism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Vertical (25 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Nature
- leans Harmony (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Polity
- leans Illiberalism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
- Ethics
- leans Means (75 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- Conviction
- mildly leans Uncertain (32 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
- Allegiance
- leans Local (25 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
8 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or MacIntyre refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Communal Order
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Knowledge
- Tradition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo
What is the origin of reality? - Economy
- Distributism
What is the ideal organization of economic life? - Authority
- Wisdom
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Law
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Role of Emotion
- Virtue to Cultivate
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Storytelling Animal / Political Animal
What is human nature?