After Virtue

⚖The case for it

Modern moral philosophy is a catastrophe: a collection of fragments from traditions we no longer understand. MacIntyre's 1981 diagnosis is devastating. Enlightenment ethics failed, and we're left with emotivism (morality as mere preference) disguised as rational argument. His solution: return to Aristotelian virtue ethics, embedded in practices and traditions. The opening 'disquieting suggestion' is one of the great philosophical thought experiments.

— the canon

✕The case against

Diagnosis is nine-tenths of the book, and the cure is a gesture. MacIntyre demolishes Enlightenment ethics with relish, then offers Aristotle, practices, and tradition in terms vague enough that thirty years of commentary still argues about what he meant. Whose tradition? Which community? He famously ends waiting for a new Benedict, which is hope, not a plan.

— the honest librarian