Finding Out The Virtue's Future Through The History

Alasdair Maclntyre is a famous contemporary American ethicist with After Virtue as one of his important representative ethical works. Maclntyre's idea falls into the category of the ethic of virtue. He criticizes the theory of normative ethics, and negates those currently popular theories including individualism, liberalism and so on... In After Virtue, Maclntyre analyses the current situation of western virtue and reviews the history of western ethics, based on which, he puts forward his virtue-centered virtue ethics finding his hopeful way in solving the present virtue crisis. His idea acts a part in correcting errors in the situation that normative ethics is at the summit of its power. He combines the historismus with virtue study, which not only has great influence on his own theory, but also plays a role of reference for the study on the overall moral theory. Maclntyre's virtue ethics influences the circles of moral theory, especially the ethics of virtue greatly. Knowing and understanding Maclntyre's virtue ethics is meaningful to solving the virtue crisis.The main ideas and the train of thought of After Virtue are the masterstroke of this paper, which follows historismus as Maclntyre shows. This paper introduces the current position of moral in western society and its reasons, also the formation and development of the thoughts of virtue, sorts out the history of western virtue ethics, especially the history before Middle Age, summarizes its main content including the relationship between virtue and practice, virtue and character unity, virtue and tradition, and analyses the meaning of his virtue of ethics to the current construction of virtue three folds which are subjectivity, realism and concordance. In the last this paper tries to make suggestions to Maclntyre's virtue ethics.