After MacIntyre: A role for tradition in moral philosophy (Alasdair MacIntyre)

Since the publication of After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre has become recognized as one of the most prominent---and controversial---moral philosophers in North America. With the subsequent publication of Whose Justice? Which Rationality? and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition, MacIntyre has become a central proponent for an approach to philosophy that makes tradition essential to moral philosophy as well as wider philosophical concerns. My dissertation is an examination of this fundamental issue of whether this tradition-based mode of moral philosophy can overcome the challenge of relativism, and if so, what might be the practical consequences of taking such an approach to philosophy.; My dissertation is divided into two parts of four chapters each. In Part I, I critically examine the concept of tradition in MacIntyre's moral philosophy. Each of his three most recent books provides a piece of a larger argument that moral and philosophical enquiries should be grounded in traditions. After setting out some introductory remarks, I provide critical expositions of MacIntyre's use of tradition in his three central texts, an important task since MacIntyre has said much about traditions but few people have provided an analysis that carefully integrates the various elements of his work.; Part II of my dissertation examines whether MacIntyre's tradition-based approach to moral philosophy entails a philosophically problematic version of relativism. First, I develop an account of the nature of relativism and address some theoretical issues related to traditions. Second, I examine several lines of criticism against MacIntyre's tradition-based approach to moral philosophy, especially focusing on the question of whether he is committed implicitly or explicitly to a version of relativism. Third, I argue that a tradition-based approach to philosophy can overcome philosophically-troubling versions of relativism and provide new insights into the nature of relativism, incommensurability and truth, in part by appealing to analysis by MacIntyre often overlooked in discussions of his work. Finally, I suggest that we must now find some practical ways to make traditions more central to our social and political philosophy, especially in relation to educational and political institutions.