The Way After Virtue

Discussion to_the ethical predictament of the modern west has become one of the hot research issues in the field of moral philosophy as well as political philosophy. Regarding this, Alasdair MacIntyre—the famous contemporary American philosopher and ethicist— with "the broad moral field of vision and the deep historical perspective", has provided rich resources for the discussion about the contemporary western ethical crisis. This article has prepared to demonstrate his views on virtue ethics, especially from the viewpoint of reflection over the ethical dilemma of the Modern West, and has attempted to probe further into this subject.Maclntyre's attention to virtue ethics originated from his reflection over the ethical predicament of the modern west. In this kind of reflection he first criticize the Enlightenment project and pointed out that the enlightening thinkers in the 18^th century failed decisively in the movement to provide the reasonable proof for morals. This is right because the virtue tradition focused on the Aristotlism, which had been existing in the western history, was rejected after the Enlightenment. According to Maclntyre, it is the deviation from the virtue tradition that cause us to fail in understanding the essence of ethics, thus leading to the crisis of moral life and theories in the modern society. Therefore, before he saved the ethical crisis of the modern west, Maclntyre began to restate the western ethical tradition of virtue. He described the historical development of virtue theories as well as justices and the historical development of justice-related rationalityes. Through the restatement of the history, Maclntyre point out the essence of ethics can be considered as the theory of human virtue that establishes its knowledge values and cultural meanings on the basis of teleology, not as the pure standard without a subject basis. Therefore, to get rid of ethical crisis the only outlet is returning to the virtue tradition and virtue history, reconstructing the context of virtue ethics. Here MacIntyre's task lies in how to reconstruct the traditional virtue ethics in the modern society. However, the history was lost...