Thursday, May 22, 2025

Alasdair MacIntyre (1929-2025)

Alasdair MacIntyre has died. His classic After Virtue had a tremendous effect on me when I was an undergrad and still in my atheist days, greatly reinforcing the attraction to Aristotelian ethics I had even then. (The spine of the light mauve cover of my copy, like that of pretty much any copy printed in the 80s, has long since turned green.)  It was, of course, part of a larger body of work which had a similarly great impact on so many people, in philosophy, theology, and beyond. RIP.

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9 comments:

  1. AnonymousMay 22, 2025 at 9:32 PM

    This is the first I have heard the news.
    Thank you for posting on it.
    He will be greatly missed.
    RIP.

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    Replies
    1. AnonymousJune 14, 2025 at 6:17 PM

      While I wish he is resting in peace, he would have had to change some views in order to be so.
      He clearly taught among, other things, that Muslims with true Christians worship the same God. Besides being philosophically inaccurate (there's a real difference between a the Trinity and the God of the Muslims), it diminishes (if not outright contradicts) the Athanasian Creed and the perennial teaching of the Church.

      That said, MacIntyre was a giant of modern philosophy and did much to further the cause of Aristotelian and Thomistic truths in the modern world - for which we can be grateful.
      I find his talk "What the Natural Sciences Do Not Explain" especially excellent and helpful.

      Delete
    2. AnonymousJune 15, 2025 at 8:10 PM

      "....between the Trinity and the god of the Muslims),....."

      Delete
  2. AnonymousMay 23, 2025 at 10:46 PM

    Never wanted a Ph.D. Became a Catholic. Thrice married. Under people he influenced , Wikipedia lists Edward Feser.

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  3. The Great Thurible of DarknessMay 24, 2025 at 6:33 PM

    Only philosopher I've ever read that had a whole section in his book about the moral philosophy of Jane Austen. What a legend. RIP.

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  4. AnonymousMay 26, 2025 at 4:37 PM

    May God have mercy on the souls of all those in the United States Armed Forces who died in service to this country. We owe our freedom to their sacrifice.

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  5. Vini TadeoMay 27, 2025 at 9:34 AM

    I found it hard to understand most parts of his book by myself, but one thing I admired about his work was his conviction: He said that in all these years since After Virtue's been published, he couldn't find a single criticism to shake his conviction of the trueness of what he wrote on.

    Maybe now his soul finds more truth and meaning in the hands of the Father than we could ever get in this life. May God receive his soul with lots of fatherly love.

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  6. ficino4mlJune 4, 2025 at 7:42 PM

    The New York Times finally printed an obituary of MacIntyre. The obit referred to Martha Nussbaum's "memorable takedown in The New York Review of Books accusing Mr. MacIntyre of dropping some of his own principles — such as his devotion to local traditions — when discussing Aristotle, Augustine and the pope. What really interested Mr. MacIntyre, she argued, was not reason but authority: the ability of the Catholic Church to secure wide agreement and, by extension, order.
    She was one of several distinguished thinkers to challenge Mr. MacIntyre’s idealized view of the past, arguing that historical societies were not as unified as he claimed and that unanimity itself was not so great."

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    Replies
    1. bmillerJune 6, 2025 at 8:00 PM

      ficino4ml,

      Do you have a point?

      Delete

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