Alasdair MacIntyre - Virtue Ethics revisited
The key work to know about, dears, is "After Virtue". In this work, MacIntyre throws a left hook at the whole emotivist (I'll explain this term later) way of looking at morality. He chooses to look at philosophy within its historical context. That is, linking philosophies to the time in which they were developed, in order to gain a picture of the history and development of ideas. He does not like what he sees.
Emotivism is a term which you should have come across in AS. Simply, it refers to that theory which posits that all moral statements are nothing more or less than statements of personal preference. There is no such entity as an objective right or wrong. The statement 'It is good to contribute to Comic Relief' is of the same order as 'I like the colour of that dress.' .. the first statement, according to emotivists, is of the same order (type) as the second. Or put another way, the first statement is not a fact any more than the second statement is. One of the best known schools of thought which embraced emotivism was Logical Positivism, exemplified in A J Ayers' 'Language Truth and Logic'. In this work, Ayers proposed that only statements about that which could be quantified or measured had meaning. Any statement which claimed to make an objective judgement about an area which couldn't be measured or quantified (eg x is good, or bad) was meaningless, for it could only be an expression of opinion.
The result, claims MacIntyre, is that too many modern philosophers have divorced their work of philosophising from the real world around them. They are quibbling about semantics (study of words) whilst the World Trade Centre burns. And talking of that, this is a good example of the way in which emotivism has permeated societal thinking, particularly in the secular nations. The correspondence of the Radio 4 PM programme the day after terrorists destroyed the WTC taking 6,000 or so people with them, consisted almost entirely of people saying that America had brought the disaster on itself. This depersonalizing of the action of the terrorists, for it was an action whose consequences were directed against people, permitted many observers to view the outrage as a response to American foreign policy which could be ethically justified. I suppose that if you were being cynical you could argue that the action was on the same level as someone who steals from another person because they are hungry.
The problem, says MacIntyre, is that philosophy has allowed itself to be robbed of its moral language. In short, philosophers have tried to steal the concept of 'right' and 'wrong' from the language. He uses an interesting analogy.
He asks us to imagine a world where natural disasters have turned the public against the natural scientists, and those who practise them. "Widespread riots occur, laboratories are burnt down, physicists are lynched, books and insturments are destroyed. Finally a Know-Nothing political movement takes power and successfully abolishes science teaching in schools and uniersities, imprisoning and executing the remaining scientists." After this, there's a reaction, and people seek to revive science. "But all they possess are fragments:" They know about experiments, but nothing about the context in which those experiments had meaning. They have instruments, or fragments of them, but no idea of what they were for, or of how to use them.
"Nonetheless all these fragments are reembodied in a set of practices which go under the revived names of physics, chemistry and biology. Adults aregue with each other about the respective merits of relativity theory, evolutionary biology ..... although they posses only a very partial knowledge of each. ..... Nobody, or almost nobody, realizes that whay they are doing is not natural science in any proper sense at all." For the fragments of knowledge that survive cannot be put into any sensible context, and therefore they make no sense. The framework in which they have meaning has been lost, possibly for ever.
MacIntyre says that moral argument is like this at present. Moral reasoning has been undermined to the extent that words like 'good', 'moral' and 'useful', although used frequently, have lost their meaning, their force and their context. Logical Positivism is no longer a force in philosophy, but what Macintyre terms 'liberal' culture still takes for granted that moral statements are still statements of personal feeling. For instance a 'liberal' might argue that having casual sexual relationships may be 'wrong' for some people, not because there is an objective standard of right or wrong which governs sexual behaviour, but because they can't take the emotional consequences. As long as 'no-one gets hurt' it's OK. (As long, of course, as the woman does not commit the cardinal sin of getting pregnant. Then she enters that most reprehensible of states, IRRESPONSIBILITY!!!)
MacIntyre felt that the failure of philosophy occurred during and after the 'Enlightenment' of the 18th century. He suggested that it was the devaluation of the human virtues, and human teleology (the belief that humans have an ultimate purpose in life) which had done the mischief. MacIntyre is referring here to the way in which St Thomas Aquinas had 'baptised' Aristotelian virtues and the concept of the 'telos' of humanity for the Church, and the rejection of these concepts by philosophers from Hume onwards.
Until then, argues MacIntyre, morality - that is, notions of right and wrong, good and bad - had been associated with the type of person you were. Without certain qualities of mind, which Aristotle, and St Thomas Aquinas categorized as 'virtues', a person could not live a moral life. Briefly, these virtues, as developed within Thomist thought were: courage, justice, temperance and wisdom (known as Cardinal Virtues) and Faith, Hope and Charity or self-giving love (the 'Theological Virtues'). A moral life was defined as a life in which the person developed into a 'good' person, through 'cultivating the moral virtues through habit, and the intellectual virtues by instruction.' P Vardy. And, underpinning all this structure of morality was God, the Divine being who had created everything for His pleasure, and to serve Him. In particular, God had created humanity, to reflect and to enjoy Him. In order to reach humanity's divine telos, people needed to be part of the Church, whose priests were in direct contact with God.
This was the notion of humanity and its purpose which was specifically rejected at the Enlightenment. Morality became isolated from any real condition of humanity, and was defined as an expression of human feeling (Hume), a universal moral law governing social behaviour (Kant), an individual choice (Kierkegaard), a means for deciding which actions will benefit the most people (Bentham, Mill). For MacIntyre, Neitzsche's theory that 'morality' is simply the exertion of one will in an attempt to subjugate another will is the clearest statement of 'emotivism'.
Having disposed of the context in which morality has force (a context of individual purpose and virtue), and made it instead "simply the expression of personal preference in a culture which has abandoned the virtues and rejected the sense of community" MacIntyre argues that philosophy and society have created three archetypal characters which embody characteristics desirable to sections of society, and who are seen as objects of regard and respect. They are
The Bureaucratic Manager
This is the sort of person you're supposed to be to get a job in business, and increasingly in teaching these days, dears. This person is efficent at using resources and people to achieve his/her own aims and objectives. Such a person will be ruthless in taking steps needed to get the desired results. People and resources are all dispensible to the Bureaucratic Manager. The only morality he/she observes is that of greatest return possible from efficiently marshalled resources.
(Trouble is, dears, many of us who are quite good teachers don't see you as commodities to be churned out of the system. However the system trundles on, and we get out!!)
The Rich Aesthete
This man, woman or couple, live for the more exciting and exotic pleasures of life. We see their images, glamorous, thin (women) aging (men - but with the obligatory trophy wife 30 years younger), in expensive homes or in exotic holiday destinations, plastered over 'Hello' magazine, or Sunday colour supplements. One's mind turns inevitably to Posh and Becks, or to Mr & Mrs Kirk Douglas, or Rod Stewart. Lest you think I'm being unfair, don't forget that MacIntyre is talking about the 'image as icon'. The people I've mentioned may well be delightful, respectable, informed and compassionate. It's their image in the eye of society that embodies the Rich Aesthete.
The Therapist
Well, given the stresses put on the rest of us by the image above, the Therapist is a necessary icon to balance the failed aspirations and thwarted hopes that the BM and RA would inevitably cause!! The Therapist is necessary to take away the pains caused by a society so dedicated to success and enjoyment of success - where success is available only to a few. The most expensive therapists, of course, service the RA and BM, but there are numerous smaller scale therapists (and therapies) available to us plebs. Think of the colossal rise in the number of people employed in the beauty business in Britain. And think of the number of cosmetics, bath products, and 'spiritual' treatments, which claim to have therapeutic value. Every product from lipstick to kitchen roll now tries to sell itself as being yet another palliative for a stressful lifestyle. Think of the increase in the words 'go on - treat yourself' or 'indulge yourself' on advertising. The society we have created teaches us to value others less and ourselves more. Therefore, we need Therapists to conceal the emptiness and meaninglessness of life from us. Macintyre suggests that the chat show and games show hosts are examples of people who engage in such therapy 'en masse'.
More later dears.