After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre: A Detailed Guide

Introduction

After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the most influential modern books on ethics and virtue. It argues that much of contemporary moral debate is confused, and it recommends a return to an older (Aristotelian) way of thinking about character and human flourishing.

MacIntyre’s diagnosis is that modern moral philosophy has not delivered a stable, rational account of why moral rules should bind us. He connects that failure to the abandonment of Aristotelian teleology—the idea that human beings have a characteristic end (a goal or purpose) that practical reason can identify and that virtues help us reach.

One way to state his central claim is this: modern moral vocabulary often mixes leftovers from older traditions with newer ideas that don’t fit together. As a result, many public disputes feel endless—not because people are lazy or irrational, but because the participants are using moral concepts that don’t share a common structure or shared standards for deciding who is right.

Problem 1: The Rejection of Aristotelian Teleology Has Failed

MacIntyre argues that ever since the rejection of Aristotelian teleology during the Enlightenment, moral philosophers have attempted to provide alternative rational, secular accounts of morality. However, all these attempts have ultimately failed, a failure most clearly perceived by Nietzsche.

Problem 2: Nietzschean Overcoming Fails

Consequently, Nietzsche’s radical proposal to reject the inherited moral tradition and construct a new morality based on the will to power gained a certain plausibility. However, MacIntyre contends that Nietzsche’s approach is not the best way forward. On his view, the main disagreement worth focusing on is between liberal individualism and an Aristotelian virtue tradition.

Solution: The Virtues

The central thesis of After Virtue is that an Aristotelian approach—focused on virtues and a substantive account of what human flourishing is—can be defended as a better alternative to the confusion of much modern moral debate. MacIntyre argues that reviving this approach requires understanding virtues in relation to practices, narratives, and moral traditions.

The book’s critique extends beyond moral philosophy to challenge the foundations of modern liberal individualism and its conceptions of justice, rationality, and human agency. MacIntyre’s argument has far-reaching implications for our understanding of politics, social institutions, and the very possibility of moral consensus in the modern world.

The Failure of the Enlightenment Project

MacIntyre argues that the Enlightenment ambition to justify morality on purely rational, secular grounds did not succeed. In his view, that failure explains a lot about why contemporary moral argument feels stuck.

Enlightenment thinkers rejected Aristotelian teleology (and much older metaphysics more broadly) and tried to rebuild ethics on new foundations. MacIntyre thinks the rebuild never worked, because too much of the older moral framework was quietly removed while many of its conclusions were kept.

The crux, on his account, is that they inherited moral concepts shaped by a teleological worldview, but they tried to use them inside a non-teleological worldview. That combination produces concepts that look familiar but no longer have clear roles or justifications.

At the heart of the problem was the loss of Aristotelian teleology—the notion that things have inherent natures and purposes or final causes toward which they aim. Without this metaphysical underpinning, morality lost its grounding in an objective account of human nature and the human telos or highest good.

The Enlightenment thinkers attempted various strategies to ground morality without teleology:

• Utilitarians like Hume and Bentham tried to base ethics on human sentiments like approval/disapproval or pleasure/pain. But this reduced morality to mere expressions of subjective emotions.
• Kantians appealed to reason and universal moral laws derived from rationality itself. But these universalist theories lacked substantive moral content beyond mere formal criteria.
• Others invoked fictions like natural rights or the “greatest happiness” to provide a foundation. But these inevitably relied on ungrounded assumptions.

MacIntyre treats these strategies as attempts to replace the older teleological structure with something that could do the same job. His claim is that, once teleology is removed, the replacement options either collapse into preference, become too formal to guide real life, or smuggle in assumptions that they cannot defend.

The result, as he tells it, is a kind of fragmentation: we keep using moral terms, but we no longer share the background picture that made those terms precise and action-guiding.

Examine the key Enlightenment attempts to ground morality without teleology:

graph TB
    E[Enlightenment Project] --> H(Hume/Utilitarians<br/>Sentiments/Emotions)
    E --> K(Kant<br/>Reason/Universality)
    E --> F(Fictions<br/>e.g. Rights, Utility)

    H --> F1[Reduced morality<br/>to subjective emotions]
    K --> F2[Formal criteria<br/>lacking substance]
    F --> F3[Ungrounded<br/>assumptions]

Consider MacIntyre’s diagnosis of the aftermath:

graph LR
    A[Aristotelian Teleology<br/>Rejected] --> B[Enlightenment Failure]
    B --> C[Loss of Rational<br/>Moral Foundations]
    C --> D[Fragmentation of<br/>Moral Concepts]
    D --> E[Moral Discourse<br/>in Disorder]

On MacIntyre’s account, by rejecting Aristotelian ideas about ethics and human nature, the Enlightenment set up a long-term problem: later moral theories kept many inherited moral conclusions while dropping the framework that made them make sense. The result is that modern moral philosophy and everyday moral argument often feel structurally unstable.

The Incoherence of Modern Moral Discourse

MacIntyre’s complaint is that contemporary moral debate often pulls moral ideas from different eras and frameworks, then treats them as if they naturally belong together. That makes disputes feel impossible to settle, because the arguments rely on incompatible assumptions about what counts as a reason.

The language and practice of morality today often involve competing concepts that don’t fit together, which helps explain why some debates drag on without reaching agreement on shared reasons.

Consider the following examples of moral debates:

Example 1: Just War

• A just war is one where the good achieved outweighs the evils, and there is a clear distinction between combatants and non-combatants. In modern war, this distinction cannot be made, so no modern war can be just. We should all be pacifists.
• To achieve peace, we must prepare for war by deterring aggressors. Build up armaments, make it clear war is possible, be prepared to go to the nuclear brink - otherwise, you will be defeated.
• Wars between great powers are destructive, but wars to liberate oppressed groups are a justified means to destroy exploitation and bring happiness.

Example 2: Abortion

• Each person has rights over their own body. Since the embryo is part of the mother’s body, the mother has the right to decide on abortion.
• If endorsing a principle would have justified one’s own abortion (except perhaps in extreme medical circumstances), then consistency might require affirming a general right to life rather than treating it as optional.
• Murder is taking innocent life. An embryo is an individual, so abortion is murder and should be prohibited.

In each case, the arguments invoke rival and incompatible moral premises that cannot be rationally adjudicated.

MacIntyre contends that the failure of the Enlightenment project to justify morality rationally left modern moral thought as a kind of mash-up: we kept using moral concepts inherited from older frameworks, but without the shared background assumptions that once made those concepts fit together. On this view, the resulting debates lack a common standard for settling disagreements.

The Loss of Teleology

The failure of the Enlightenment project to provide a rational, secular foundation for morality is closely tied to the rejection of Aristotelian teleology—the idea that things have intrinsic goals or purposes that define their proper functioning and guide ethical conduct.

Aristotle’s ethics was grounded in a metaphysical biology that saw human beings as having a specific nature with an inherent telos or end towards which they are directed. The virtues were understood as those qualities that enable us to fulfill our natural purpose and achieve the highest human good of eudaimonia.

However, as the modern scientific understanding of nature advanced, Aristotle’s biological framework was discredited. The notion of things having intrinsic purposes or final causes was abandoned in favor of a purely mechanistic view of nature governed by efficient causes. As MacIntyre explains:

The joint effect of the secular rejection of both Protestant and Catholic theology and the scientific and philosophical rejection of Aristotelianism was to eliminate any notion of man-as-he-could-be-if-he-realized-his-telos. Since the whole point of ethics-both as a theoretical and a practical discipline- is to enable man to pass from his present state to his true end, the elimination of any notion of essential human nature and with it the abandonment of any notion of a telos leaves behind a moral scheme composed of two remaining elements whose relationship becomes quite unclear.

In other words, once the idea of humans having a natural end or purpose was discarded, the entire ethical framework built around achieving that end became incoherent. The moral injunctions and virtues that previously guided us towards our telos were left without justification.

MacIntyre argues that, by rejecting Aristotelian teleology, Enlightenment thinkers were left with moral rules whose original rationale had been removed, along with an account of human nature that no longer includes an internal standard for what counts as flourishing.

This loss of teleology and the resulting incoherence paved the way for the eventual failure of the Enlightenment’s quest to ground morality in a rational, secular foundation based on human nature. As MacIntyre contends, later attempts by philosophers like Hume, Kant and others to provide such a foundation were inevitably undermined by working with an impoverished conception of human nature shorn of Aristotelian purposiveness.

The rejection of Aristotelian teleology, on his account, left a gap at the center of Enlightenment ethics that later theories could not fully close. This helps explain the fragmentation he diagnoses in modern moral debate in After Virtue. Reviving some notion of an intrinsic human telos is therefore central to his broader alternative.

The Aristotelian Tradition of Virtue Ethics

MacIntyre argues that the Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics provides a compelling alternative to the incoherent state of modern moral philosophy and discourse. This tradition offers a coherent account of the virtues that is grounded in social practices, the narrative unity of human life, and moral traditions themselves.

At the heart of this account is the idea that the virtues are not merely isolated character traits, but rather qualities that enable us to achieve the “internal goods” inherent to social practices. A practice, as defined by MacIntyre, is:

Examples of practices include arts, sciences, games, and certain kinds of productive labor. What distinguishes a practice is that it has intrinsic goods or standards of excellence that are only achievable by participating in and mastering that practice. The virtues – qualities like courage, honesty, justice – are necessary for achieving these internal goods.

For instance, the virtue of honesty is required to make progress in the practice of scientific inquiry, where truthfulness about evidence and findings is essential. Without the virtue of honesty, one cannot fully participate in or reap the internal rewards of science as a practice.

In contrast to these internal goods are “external goods” like money, status, and power, which are contingently attached to practices. While the virtues are necessary for internal goods, they may in fact hinder the acquisition of external goods. This tension highlights the independence of the virtues from mere self-interest or utility.

MacIntyre contends that to understand the virtues properly, we must also understand how our individual lives have a narrative unity. Just as a story has a beginning, middle, and end with a unifying plot or theme, so too do our lives embody a certain narrative structure. The virtues find their meaning and point within the context of this overarching life narrative.

Moreover, the virtues and the goods we pursue through them are inherently rooted in specific moral traditions. MacIntyre argues that separating the virtues from their historical context in the great moral traditions of the past leads to incoherence. The virtues only make full sense when understood as part of an ongoing tradition of moral inquiry and debate.

So in summary, MacIntyre locates the meaning of the virtues at the intersection of three elements:

• Social practices with internal goods
• The narrative unity of an individual human life
• Moral traditions that enshrine and debate the virtues

By reviving this Aristotelian vision, MacIntyre aims to restore coherence and rationality to our contemporary moral thought and discourse, which has become fragmented and incoherent in its rejection of the classical tradition.

Practices, Narratives, and Traditions

According to MacIntyre, the Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics cannot be properly understood without grasping three key notions: practices, narratives, and traditions. These concepts provide the necessary background for making sense of the virtues and their role in human life.

Practices

A practice is defined as:

By a ‘practice’ I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.

Some examples of practices include arts, sciences, games, politics (in the Aristotelian sense), and the making and sustaining of family life.

The key aspects of a practice are:

• It involves cooperative human activity established within a social setting.
• It has its own internal goods and standards of excellence.
• Engaging in the practice extends human powers and conceptions related to its ends and goods.

To acquire and exercise the virtues, we must participate in practices. The virtues are precisely those qualities that enable us to achieve the internal goods of practices. For instance, the virtues of justice, courage, and honesty are necessary for sustaining practices and achieving excellence within them.

Narratives

MacIntyre argues that human actions and lives have a fundamentally narrative structure:

It is because we all live out narratives in our lives and because we understand our own lives in terms of the narratives that we live out that the form of narrative is appropriate for understanding the actions of others. Stories are lived before they are told-except in the case of fiction.

In plain terms, the claim is that we make sense of actions and lives as parts of stories. Intentions, commitments, roles, and long-term projects connect individual choices into something intelligible over time.

Our lives are not merely sequences of disconnected events but have a narrative unity and form, characterized by:

• A beginning, middle, and prospective end
• Setting within larger social contexts and narratives
• Involving intentions, purposes, and committed roles

The virtues are intelligible only when situated within the narrative unity of a human life striving towards certain goods and purposes. Divorced from this narrative context, the virtues lose their meaning and justification.

Traditions

Finally, MacIntyre emphasizes the role of traditions in shaping both practices and narratives:

A living tradition then is an historically extended, socially embodied argument, and an argument precisely in part about the goods which constitute that tradition.

In plain terms, he treats traditions as long-running, socially embodied arguments about which goods matter, and how to pursue those goods well over time.

The virtues are always situated within larger traditions of moral inquiry and practice. A living tradition is not just a static list of beliefs; it is an ongoing debate carried by communities across generations.

To properly understand and exercise the virtues requires engaging with and contributing to a tradition’s ongoing debate about its defining goods and purposes. The virtues are thus inseparable from the practices and narratives found within particular moral traditions.

The concepts of practices, narratives, and traditions are interlocking notions that provide the necessary context for grasping the meaning and justification of the virtues according to the Aristotelian tradition revived by MacIntyre.

The Rationality of Traditions

Aristotle’s account of the virtues rests on the idea that virtues and their role in human life can only be properly understood within the context of certain key concepts - practices, narratives, and traditions. We’ve already explored practices and narratives, but the third element - traditions - is equally crucial.

The virtues only make full sense as part of this wider inquiry within a tradition. Different traditions may have competing conceptions of the virtues, rooted in different perspectives on what constitutes the best kind of human life.

But this doesn’t mean all traditions are equally rational or defensible. MacIntyre argues that some traditions - like the Aristotelian one - can be vindicated through reason as offering a more coherent and compelling account.

To see why, we first need to understand that traditions are not static, but evolve through critical debates and disagreements internal to the tradition itself.

MacIntyre rejects the idea that a philosophical tradition simply hands down a set of fixed doctrines from authorities in the past. Rather, a living tradition persists through ongoing disagreement and revision as it grapples with new problems and challenges over time.

This means that evaluating a tradition is not just a matter of examining its foundational texts, but understanding it as an ongoing dialectic. The hallmark of a strong tradition is its ability to advance through honest debate, correcting its mistakes while preserving its core insights.

Traditions that stagnate or discourage such critical reappraisal, on the other hand, are in danger of degenerating or being discarded. MacIntyre argues that the Aristotelian tradition survived because it could improve through internal criticism and thoughtful innovation.

So from MacIntyre’s perspective, evaluating a moral tradition is not just about its historical pedigree, but its capacity for reasoned development. A tradition’s coherence and sustainability depend on whether it can generate strong internal criticism—ways of spotting and correcting its own errors without losing its central insights.

This highlights how MacIntyre sees moral inquiry as an intrinsically historical, social and tradition-constituted enterprise - not just the application of individual reason. At the same time, this socially-embedded rationality is what allows some moral traditions to be vindicated over others through philosophical argument.

MacIntyre contends that the Aristotelian tradition, with its emphasis on practices, narratives and virtues, offers superior conceptual resources for making sense of moral life compared to its modern liberal and individualist rivals. By sustaining a more convincing debate over the centuries, the Aristotelian tradition demonstrates its greater rationality.

The implication is that renewing moral thought requires not just individual philosophical brilliance, but immersing ourselves once again in a sustainable moral tradition - flawed yet self-correcting - that can do justice to the complexities of ethics and human life. For MacIntyre, the Aristotelian tradition represents our best avenue for reviving that kind of rationally grounded moral inquiry.

Justice and Modern Liberal Individualism

In the previous section, we discussed how the Aristotelian tradition grounds the virtues in social practices, the narrative unity of human lives, and moral traditions. MacIntyre argues that this coherent account stands in stark contrast to modern liberal individualist theories of justice, which rely on deeply problematic concepts.

To illustrate this, MacIntyre focuses on two influential contemporary philosophers who exemplify the liberal individualist approach - John Rawls and Robert Nozick. Their theories are analyzed to reveal the deficiencies of liberal individualism more broadly.

The Central Dispute

MacIntyre contends that mainstream debates around distributive justice founder on an irresolvable conflict between two competing conceptions of justice:

• Justice as Entitlement (Nozick): Justice consists in respecting individuals’ legitimate entitlements acquired through just initial acquisition and voluntary transfer.
• Justice as Fair Distribution (Rawls): Justice requires arranging the distribution of economic benefits and burdens to maximize the position of the least advantaged.

graph TB
    A[Justice]
    B[Entitlement]
    C[Fair Distribution]

    A-->B
    A-->C

    B-->|Nozick|D[Respect Legitimate<br/>Private Entitlements]
    C-->|Rawls|E[Maximize Position<br/>of Least Advantaged]

The conflict between these two views, according to MacIntyre, is deep and persistent within the liberal framework. Each side advances principles that do not share a common measure for comparison, so the disagreement tends not to resolve by argument alone.

There is no agreed liberal standard for weighing the primacy of entitlement against the demands of fair distribution - these are based on entirely different justificatory grounds that liberal theory cannot reconcile. As MacIntyre puts it:

Confronted by a given piece of property or resource, A will be apt to claim that it is justly his because he owns it-he acquired it legitimately, he earned it; B will be apt to claim that it justly ought to be someone else’s, because they need it much more, and if they do not have it, their basic needs will not be met. But our pluralist culture possesses no method of weighing, no rational criterion for deciding between claims based on legitimate entitlement against claims based on need.

Put plainly: one side treats legitimate ownership as decisive, while the other treats urgent need as decisive—and modern liberal argument often lacks a shared rule for ranking those two kinds of reasons.

MacIntyre argues that Nozick’s and Rawls’s theories mirror the same split we see in ordinary political arguments about distribution. In his view, the theories don’t resolve that split; they restate it in more abstract form, so the disagreement persists.

The Critique of Rawls and Nozick

MacIntyre argues that John Rawls’s and Robert Nozick’s influential liberal theories of justice illustrate broader problems in modern moral theory. Even though the two views disagree, he thinks they share weaknesses that come from the individualistic starting points of liberalism.

Both Rawls and Nozick aim to provide rational principles to which contending parties with conflicting interests can appeal. Their approaches articulate key elements of the opposing views in the debate between characters ‘A’ and ‘B’ in the opening example.

Rawls’s Theory of Justice

Rawls attempts to derive principles of justice from the hypothetical situation of agents behind a “veil of ignorance” - where individuals do not know their place in society, talents, or conception of the good. He argues that rational agents in this “original position” would choose:

• The Equal Liberty Principle: Each person has an equal right to the most extensive total system of basic liberties compatible with a similar system for all.
• The Difference Principle: Social and economic inequalities are permissible only if they are arranged so that they are both: a. Reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage (the greatest benefit of the least advantaged) b. Attached to positions and offices open to all

Rawls contends that rational, self-interested individuals operating behind the veil of ignorance would agree to these principles, prioritizing basic liberties and allowing inequalities only if they benefit the least well-off.

Nozick’s Entitlement Theory

In contrast, Nozick grounds justice in individual rights and legitimate private holdings. He argues that a distribution is just if “everyone is entitled to the holdings they possess under the distribution.” Holdings are legitimate if acquired through:

• Just Initial Acquisition: Appropriating unowned resources through labor.
• Just Transfer: Voluntarily transferring legitimately held resources.

Nozick opposes patterned principles of distributive justice like Rawls’s, as they would involve redistributing legitimately held private property without the owners’ consent - violating their rights.

MacIntyre contends that while Rawls and Nozick present their theories as providing objective, rational grounds for justice, they in fact exhibit the very contradictions and incompatibilities that plague modern moral discourse.

Rawls premises justice on a principle of equality respecting basic needs, while Nozick grounds justice in equality of entitlement respecting individual rights. As MacIntyre argues:

Rawls’s priorities are incompatible with Nozick’s in a way parallel to that in which B’s position is incompatible with A’s, but also that Rawls’s position is incommensurable with Nozick’s in a way similarly parallel to that in which B’s is incommensurable with A’s.

In other words, Rawls’s and Nozick’s positions are not just different; MacIntyre argues they are structurally at odds in a way that makes comparison difficult. Each theory treats a different kind of reason (need/fairness vs. legitimate ownership/rights) as fundamental.

Their principles and premises cannot be rationally weighed against each other from some neutral standpoint. They are rooted in fundamentally different conceptions of justice.

MacIntyre highlights that both theories exclude the crucial Aristotelian notion of desert—the idea that justice tracks merit and one’s genuine contributions to the community’s common purposes. By adopting an individualistic stance where society is merely an association of strangers pursuing private interests, Rawls and Nozick lack the metaphysical grounding to make judgments of desert coherent.

Ultimately, MacIntyre sees their dispute as emblematic of the failure of modern moral philosophy rooted in liberal individualism. Rather than providing rational resolutions, Rawls and Nozick exhibit the very contradictions that undermine modern moral discourse, reflecting incommensurate premises that cannot be adjudicated from a neutral standpoint.

MacIntyre contends that Rawls and Nozick exemplify the liberal tradition’s inability to ground moral philosophy in a coherent, rational framework - in contrast to the Aristotelian tradition of the virtues. Their dispute demonstrates the contradictions of modern individualistic justice and its detachment from notions of desert tied to a shared conception of the human good within communities.

The Loss of Desert

One of the major shortcomings of modern liberal theories of justice, as critiqued by MacIntyre, is their inability to account for the notion of desert or deservedness. Both John Rawls and Robert Nozick, despite their differences, fail to incorporate desert as a principle of justice in their theories.

According to MacIntyre, the concept of desert is intimately tied to the Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics and the idea of individuals contributing to the common good of a community. Within this framework, justice is understood as giving each person what they deserve based on their virtues and their contributions to the shared pursuit of goods internal to practices.

However, in the modern liberal individualist view, society is often pictured as an arena where individuals pursue their own chosen conceptions of the good life. On that picture, there is little shared basis for judging what someone deserves based on virtue or contribution to a common project.

Both Rawls and Nozick derive principles of justice from hypothetical situations involving rational individuals behind a “veil of ignorance” (Rawls) or based on premises about individual rights (Nozick). But in neither case is there room for desert based on an individual’s positive qualities or negative vices in relation to the good of the community.

Rawls explicitly argues that notions of desert cannot ground principles of justice, since we cannot know what anyone deserves until the rules of justice are already formulated. Nozick’s scheme of justice based on entitlements similarly precludes basing justice on desert, as it is solely concerned with legitimate acquisition and transfer of holdings.

MacIntyre argues that by leaving “desert” out of their frameworks, Rawls and Nozick reflect a broader modern loss: older ethical and political traditions treated desert as central to justice, whereas many modern theories do not. He sees that shift as one part of a larger break from an Aristotelian way of thinking about the human good and the virtues.

The concept of desert is closely tied to virtues and their role in contributing to the good of a community based on a shared telos. Eliminating desert from theories of justice is emblematic of modernity’s loss of this ethical framework.

Conclusions and Controversies

MacIntyre’s argument in After Virtue has been both influential and controversial. His central claim - that the Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics represents a more coherent and compelling moral philosophy than modern moral theories - has sparked debates across various fields. In this section, we will examine some of the key conclusions and controversies surrounding MacIntyre’s work.

The Failure of the Enlightenment Project

MacIntyre argues that the Enlightenment project to provide a rational, secular justification for morality has ultimately failed. He contends that attempts by philosophers like Hume, Kant, and Mill to ground morality in reason, utility, or other non-teleological foundations have proven inadequate. The rejection of Aristotelian teleology and the classical tradition of virtue ethics has left modern moral discourse fragmented and incoherent.

MacIntyre’s critique of the Enlightenment project has been influential, but it has also faced criticism. Some argue that his portrayal of the Enlightenment thinkers is overly simplistic or that he overlooks other potential foundations for morality.

The Aristotelian Alternative

As an alternative to modern moral theories, MacIntyre advocates reviving the Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics. He argues that virtues like courage, justice, and temperance can only be fully understood within the context of practices, narratives, and traditions. MacIntyre contends that the Aristotelian approach, which grounds morality in the pursuit of human flourishing (eudaimonia), offers a more coherent and defensible moral framework.

However, MacIntyre’s interpretation and application of Aristotle’s thought have been subject to criticism. Some argue that his reading of Aristotle is selective or that he overstates the coherence and rationality of the Aristotelian tradition. Others question whether the Aristotelian approach can be successfully adapted to modern societies.

MacIntyre’s advocacy of the Aristotelian tradition has been influential in reviving interest in virtue ethics, but it has also faced challenges from other moral philosophers who defend alternative approaches or interpretations of Aristotle.

The Critique of Liberal Individualism

A central target of MacIntyre’s critique is liberal individualism, a dominant strand of modern moral and political thought. He argues that liberal individualist theories of justice, exemplified by the works of Rawls and Nozick, rely on incoherent concepts and fail to account for the importance of desert and deservedness in moral judgments.

MacIntyre’s critique of liberal individualism has sparked debates about the nature of justice, the role of individual rights, and the relationship between individuals and communities. Some defend liberal individualism as a necessary foundation for modern pluralistic societies, while others argue that MacIntyre’s critique exposes fundamental flaws in liberal thought.

MacIntyre’s critique of liberal individualism has been influential in reigniting debates about the nature of justice and the foundations of political philosophy, but it has also faced pushback from defenders of liberal individualism and alternative theories of justice.

MacIntyre’s work in After Virtue has been widely discussed and debated, with implications reaching beyond moral philosophy into fields like political theory, sociology, and anthropology. While his argument for reviving the Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics has been influential, it has also faced challenges and criticisms from various perspectives. The controversies surrounding MacIntyre’s work highlight the ongoing debates and unresolved tensions within moral philosophy and related disciplines.

Nietzsche or Aristotle?

MacIntyre frames a central choice in the book as a contrast between two broad paths: a Nietzschean response (roughly, abandoning inherited moral language as dishonest or incoherent) and an Aristotelian response (recovering a virtue-ethical framework tied to human ends, practices, and communities). He motivates the dilemma with two claims: modern moral argument is messy in ways that are hard to fix from within, and attempts to justify morality after rejecting teleology have not delivered what they promised. On that story, Nietzsche’s demolition can look tempting—unless the rejection of Aristotelian virtue ethics was itself a mistake.

Unless the Aristotelian virtue tradition can be defended as genuinely rational, MacIntyre thinks Nietzsche’s rejection of traditional morality will continue to look forceful.

Even so, MacIntyre thinks it would be difficult to live out a consistent Nietzschean stance in the modern world. His point is that many familiar “types” in contemporary life already rely on the very moral concepts and patterns of argument that both Nietzscheans and Aristotelians would want to criticize and move beyond.

Step 1

MacIntyre’s point is that modern public life offers a fairly small set of familiar social roles that people tend to fall into (for example: the efficient administrator, the self-focused consumer, the helping professional, and the political activist). These roles come with built-in assumptions—especially that a small class of “experts” should manage outcomes, while everyone else is treated as a moral chooser whose commitments are largely private.

Step 2

Pointing out a single obvious illusion can be entertaining; arguing that the broader culture is living with a deeper confusion is much less welcome. MacIntyre suggests that a Nietzschean critique can feel brutally honest in this way—but only if the Aristotelian alternative really is unavailable.

MacIntyre uses the Aristotelian tradition in two main ways:

1. Much of modern moral talk, he argues, is best understood as partial leftovers from an older, virtue-centered framework—mixed with newer concepts that don’t fit cleanly with those leftovers.
2. Rejecting Aristotle wasn’t just rejecting a few claims; it meant rejecting a different kind of ethical structure—one where rules make sense only within a broader view centered on virtues and a conception of the human good. So Nietzsche’s critique of rule-focused moralities (like some forms of utilitarianism and Kantianism) does not automatically refute Aristotelian virtue ethics.

MacIntyre’s contention is that Nietzsche’s polemic fails against the Aristotelian tradition in particular. He gives (at least) two routes to that conclusion:

Nietzsche doesn’t win “by default”: Nietzsche looks strongest if every rival attempt at moral justification collapses. But MacIntyre thinks there is a positive case for an Aristotelian tradition of practical reasoning—developed through practices, narratives, and traditions—that must be answered rather than simply dismissed.

The “great man” lacks shared standards: MacIntyre argues that Nietzsche’s ideal of the self-authorizing “great man” cannot appeal to objective goods recognized within shared forms of life, because Nietzsche treats morality as a cover for the will to power. That makes the ideal figure isolated: he can only treat others as instruments rather than partners in a shared search for the good.

In this portrait, the exemplar does not submit to shared standards, does not rely on mutual accountability, and does not treat truthfulness or community as intrinsic goods. The figure’s “authority” comes only from self-assertion.

This characterization is rooted in Nietzsche’s contention that European morality since ancient Greece has been a series of disguises for the will to power, and that the claim to objectivity for such morality cannot be rationally sustained. Because of this, the ‘great man’ cannot enter into relationships mediated by appeal to shared standards, virtues, or goods. He is his own sole authority, and his relationships to others are exercises of that authority.

If the good is understood through practices, the narrative unity of a life, and traditions of inquiry, then genuine goods (and the authority of virtues and rules) are discovered inside communities oriented toward shared standards. MacIntyre’s objection is that the “great man” cuts himself off from the very social conditions that make objective goods intelligible, and so ends up trying to be his own entire moral universe.

Hence, we must conclude not only that Nietzsche does not win the argument by default against the Aristotelian tradition but also, and perhaps more importantly, that it is from the perspective of that tradition that we can best understand the mistakes at the heart of the Nietzschean position.

MacIntyre thinks Nietzsche’s appeal is partly rhetorical: if morality is mostly expressive (more like endorsement and condemnation than discovery of truth), then intellectual honesty may seem to require discarding inherited moral language as misleading. Nietzsche, on this reading, follows that impulse more consistently than most people do.

But MacIntyre argues that the “liberation” comes with costs: Nietzsche’s ideal ends up reproducing the very individualism it wants to transcend. Instead of escaping modern liberal individualist categories, the Nietzschean posture becomes another expression of them.

MacIntyre treats Nietzsche as a major opponent of the Aristotelian tradition. But he also argues that Nietzsche’s stance ends up repeating key assumptions of the modern moral culture Nietzsche aimed to attack. On MacIntyre’s telling, the deepest conflict is not “Nietzsche vs. everyone else,” but rather liberal individualism (in its various forms) versus an Aristotelian virtue tradition (in its various forms).

Responding to Relativism and Perspectivism

MacIntyre argues that the modern ideas of moral relativism and perspectivism, which hold that moral truths are relative to cultures or individual perspectives, cannot withstand scrutiny once we understand morality in light of the Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics.

The argument against relativism stems from MacIntyre’s insistence on the importance of moral traditions. As discussed in the section on practices, narratives, and traditions, morality is fundamentally tied to the narratives and social contexts that give rise to and sustain moral concepts like the virtues.

Step 1

Traditions are not simply relative constructs, but embody real achievements of understanding through a coherent, evolving debate. As MacIntyre puts it:

Moreover when a tradition is in good order it is always partially constituted by an argument about the goods the pursuit of which gives to that tradition its particular point and purpose.

In other words, when a tradition is functioning well, it contains ongoing argument about which goods define it and give it its purpose.

Step 2

Thus, some traditions can lay better claim to truth and rationality than others based on the substantive quality of their internal disputes and development over time.

The perspectival critique, which suggests morality is purely subjective based on individual viewpoints, is undermined by MacIntyre’s emphasis on the fundamentally social nature of moral inquiry. Morality is not simply a matter of individual preference, but arises from the collective debates and practices within traditions over centuries.

For example, consider the virtue of justice. Modern individualist thinkers tend to analyze justice solely from an individual’s perspective - either as securing individual entitlements (Nozick) or meeting individual needs (Rawls). But from an Aristotelian view, Justice is inherently tied to one’s social roles, the particular community, and the broader ethical tradition that conceptualizes justice. It cannot be reduced to individual perspectives alone.

In essence, MacIntyre argues that morality - and particularly a morality of virtues - is necessarily rational and objective by being grounded in collective, multi-generational traditions of ethical inquiry and practice. Claims of pure relativism or subjectivism simply fail to adequately account for this socially-embedded, historically-evolving dimension of ethics.

The Political and Social Implications

MacIntyre’s critique of liberal individualism and modernity has radical implications for politics and society. His argument suggests that the modern liberal state and its political institutions lack genuine moral foundations and cannot provide a basis for moral consensus or resolve deep moral conflicts.

The key point is that modern systematic politics, whether liberal, conservative, radical or socialist, must be rejected from the standpoint of the Aristotelian tradition of the virtues. Modern politics expresses in its institutional forms a systematic rejection of this tradition.

The Crisis of Modern Politics

According to MacIntyre, modern politics often functions as a managed continuation of social conflict. Because society lacks deep moral consensus, political debates and institutions often cannot be grounded in shared moral principles; instead they frequently reflect clashes between groups with rival moral visions and interests.

The controversies over justice and liberal theories exemplified by Rawls and Nozick reveal an inability to settle such conflicts through rational debate. MacIntyre argues that we lack shared criteria for weighing claims based on entitlement, need, equality, or other competing principles. Political resolutions, like the Bakke case, involve pragmatic compromises rather than principled moral reasoning.

The Demise of Patriotism

A consequence of this moral crisis is the demise of patriotism as a virtue. In a society lacking a coherent moral community, the nature of political obligation becomes unclear. Loyalty to one’s country becomes detached from obedience to the government, which often fails to represent the moral ideals of its citizens.

Patriotism was a virtue founded on attachment to a political and moral community. But when government no longer represents that community, patriotism loses its meaning and force.

MacIntyre contends that the modern state is not a true political community in the older sense that could justify patriotism as a virtue. Instead, he treats it as a set of institutions that imposes administrative unity on a society that does not share a single moral outlook.

Towards New Forms of Community

Since modernity has failed to provide a coherent moral and political order (in his view), MacIntyre argues that we should stop treating national politics as the primary place to rebuild moral life. Instead, he proposes building local forms of community in which civility, education of character, and serious intellectual and moral practices can be sustained.

These new forms of community would be based on the Aristotelian tradition and its conception of the virtues. By recovering an Aristotelian understanding of practices, narratives and moral traditions, MacIntyre hopes morality can be rebuilt from the ground up, apart from liberal individualism.

MacIntyre leaves open what precise shape these communities would take, but sees them as an alternative to working within or justifying the modern nation-state and its liberal political vision.

MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 3rd ed. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.