After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition

By Alasdair MacIntyre.

-Recommended by Traversing Tradition-

MacIntyre explores how much of the modern discussions on “ethics” are philosophically incoherent. They try to inherit a legacy of moral discourse by relying on assumptions contrary to the Enlightenment while trying to secularize and rationalize them for a world in which strong metaphysical claims about good and virtue seem out of place. Similar to many Muslim critiques, MacIntyre explores the Western philosophical tradition through Marx, Nietzsche, Rawls, and Sandel, and criticizes them from the perspective of an ethics of virtue which sees the good as grounded in the metaphysical purpose of man. He critiques various formulations of modern morality that have become only more prevalent — technocracy, performativity, ostentation, emotivism, and relativism. He concludes that the contemporary malaise of modern morality is specifically in its inability to ground its claims outside the legacy of the pre-enlightenment ethical foundations of “tradition”.

by Aqil Azme and Faizan Malik.