MacIntyre's Critiques On Modern Western Moral Philosophy

Alasdair MacIntyre is a leading contemporary moral philosopher, whose systematic and deep critiques on modern western moral philosophy have drawn many scholars'attention. The basic question concerned by this essay is MacIntyre's critiques on modern western moral philosophy. There are some other questions oriented from this basic question, such as: who is MacIntyre, what is modern western moral philosophy, how does MacIntyre criticize it, from which perspectives does he criticize it, are his critiques reasonable, how do others evaluate his critiques, what can we learn from MacIntyre's critiques. Among those questions, the question how MacIntyre criticizes modern western moral philosophy is the main concern. I begin to discuss this question from the following dimensions: MacIntyre's critiques on Emotionalist ethics, modern society, the project of enlightenment, the moral inquiry of modern society, Nietzsche and so on. In attempting to answer those question, I try to provide some creative interpretations of MacIntyre's thought. From my point of view, MacIntyre's critiques on modern western moral philosophy are reasonable. Although his critiques have not been shared by all the scholars in academic circle, his critiques are very important to understand modern morality and values, especially the problems and defects of modern morality. I also try to draw some conclusions about his constructive thought in this essay, i.e,the ways to get out of the dilemma of modern morality,i.e., returning to Aristotle, using traditional narrative way to do research on moral philosophy, reconstructing telos, reconstructing all different forms of communities. At last, I raise the question that what we can learn from MacIntyre's thought. Under the perspectives of criticizing reality and learning from tradition, what MacIntyre has done is worthy of our study. We can more easily find the new approach of moral philosophy study if we locate moral philosophy study in the context of traditional culture and realistic problems as MacIndtyre.