Nature, origins and the roots of error: MacIntyre's three rival conceptions of moral inquiry (Alasdair MacIntyre)

Alasdair MacIntyre criticizes contemporary moral philosophy, drawing a sharp contrast between a tradition arising from Aristotle and Aquinas and what MacIntyre claims to be a series of fragmented and incoherent successor views. In his earlier work, MacIntyre provided an account of how the successor views have relied upon various sets of incommensurable premises. In his later work, he has sought to rehabilitate the teleological tradition in ethics by showing that it is rationally superior to two large-scale, competing conceptual schemas in which he believes all contemporary modes of moral inquiry to be rooted, one exemplified in the work of Nietzsche and the other in the work of 19th century heirs to the Enlightenment. Given MacIntyre's view that human lives implicitly or explicitly embody ethical theories, and that ethical theories are specified by lives of practical rationality, he believes that the outcome of a dialectical confrontation of the sort he characterizes has real application both to individual choices and to social life.; The present thesis begins by stipulating much that is controversial about MacIntyre's work, including his definition and history of moral inquiry, his views on incommensurability and the value he places on explanatory power as a criterion of theory choice. The investigation then turns to a consideration of whether MacIntyre has failed to recognize evolutionary naturalism as a large-scale conceptual schema that seems capable of reconstituting the "encyclopedic" enterprise by generating a powerful explanation of human origins, human nature, moral error and the problems of ethical theory. One contention of this thesis is that the metaphysical premises of evolutionary naturalism underlie not only contemporary biology, but also a growing body of research in the social sciences as well as the work of various philosophers who are skeptical about the prospects of ethical theory. The thesis suggests that in order to prevail on his own terms in his defense of a robust teleological tradition, MacIntyre will either have to show that a thoroughgoing evolutionary naturalism is deficient as an account of human nature or reformulate his criteria for rational superiority.