Criticism Of McIntyre 's Virtue Ethics

Since 1980s, Maclntyre’s virtue ethics has been an influential ethics in the west. His representative work After Virtue has ever become widely-known in academic circles both at home and abroad, which has become a classic that could compare favorably with Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. However, there exist some incorrect views and presupposition in Maclntyre’s virtue ethics and arguments. And people have not yet fully known them. Based on the interpretation of his theories and arguments, this thesis intends to analyze advantages and disadvantages of Maclntyre’s theories, point out emphatically the viewpoints that deserve to be deliberated and make a critical analysis and review on them.MacIntyre’s virtue ethics mainly consists of two parts:the first part is about his critique on modern western moral philosophy. It is his critique that provides significant basis for his virtue ethics; the second part is the core of his virtue ethics, i.e. his definition of essence of virtues.The first chapter of this thesis mainly expounds MacIntyre’s critique to contemporary moral philosophy. He asserts that contemporary morality and moral philosophy is in the crisis that is hard to get rid of. Due to incommensurability of fundamental value principles, the Enlightment Project is totally a failure and rationality is impossible to settle down. Maclntyre gives three ethical debates to certify his views above. He also posts critique to utilitarianism and Kantism, maintaining all of them are divorced from tradition, history and facts. Therefore, he advocates to return to Aristotelian tradition, which provides certain basis for his virtue ethics. This is the primary content of this chapter. The second chapter of this thesis interprets the core content of MacIntyre’s virtue ethics, mainly focusing on his definition of essence of virtues. He affirms that people could understand the concept of virtue only by practice, narrative unity and tradition. Virtue is a series of traits, which enables people to get internal goods in practice, but also as part of good life, helps to maintain tradition.The third chapter of this thesis points out emphatically certain arbitrary, groundless views in MacIntyre’s argumentation of virtue ethics. Firstly, he maintains that the root cause of unsolved dilemma western morality caught in relies on fundamental moral disagreements which is essentially disagreement among fundamental value principles. People could not appeal to rationality to reach a consensus on moral issues. That is why moral philosophy is in an unsolved dilemma. However, MacIntyre exaggerates the situation that people could not resort to rationality to settle moral disputes. Secondly, in MacIntyre’s opinion, incommensurable fundamental value principles incapacitated people getting object, sound moral judgment. This section relates to the concept of incommensurability. However, in accordance to the importance of sequence, those fundamental value principles is comparable and solvable. Further, even if there exist conflicts of fundamental value principles, people could also solve those moral disagreement through rationality. This above is the second section of this chapter.Thirdly, Maclntyre considers the Enlightment Project as the root of all evil leading to the chaos of moral philosophy. However, the so-called disagreement and conflicts among fundamental value principles can be tracked back to the time of Plato. Obviously, Maclntyre takes the effect for the cause, attributing this conflict to the modern moral philosophy, which is unpersuasive and untenable. This above is the third section of the chapter. At last, Maclntyre always emphasizes that we should understand the essence of virtue in the context of specific social condition and history. The fourth section of this chapter would discuss and analyze his relevant views and thoughts.