Late last month, Alasdair MacIntyre passed away at the age of 96. Best known for his book After Virtue, he was one of the most significant moral philosophers of our time. Over the course of a career that spanned 70 years, he authored more than 20 books and 200 scholarly papers.
MacIntyre was born in Glasgow, was educated in England, and began teaching and publishing at the University of Manchester when he was just 22 years old. He taught at a variety of universities (Leeds, Oxford, Boston, Vanderbilt, Yale, Duke, and more) before settling as a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.
His theological positions also varied. He once considered becoming a Presbyterian minister, later became Anglican, then became an atheist. Influenced by the writings of Thomas Aquinas, MacIntyre converted to Catholicism at age 55 and remained devout. He believed nature and grace were mutually enriching, yet his case for virtue could be made on secular grounds, available to those without theological convictions.
I was first introduced to MacIntyre’s case for virtue as a doctoral student in Scotland. Understanding his ideas required careful reading, but comprehending them felt like lifting a veil. MacIntyre’s moral framework helped me to see the world differently. His writing could be abstract and technical, but it held implications for ordinary life. He made me want to be a better chess player, a better craftsman, a better citizen. His work gave me the historical and philosophical credibility to speak of purpose and excellence for Christian and secular audiences alike.
His intellectual depth and consistency will reverberate well beyond the field of philosophy. MacIntyre’s work has broad implications for sociology, psychology, theology, and politics. He drew on sources from across millennia, reintroducing a moral paradigm from ancient Greece with profound implications for today.
Although many contemporary ethicists dwell on the personal choices of individuals, MacIntyre called for construction of local communities where wise individuals, meaningful practices, and community aspirations could simultaneously flourish. MacIntyre was both provocative and brilliant, and his legacy is immense. He offered practical hope by describing exemplars in contexts as diverse as a Scottish fishing village or the United States Supreme Court.
Those who knew him best also understood his acerbic wit and his kindness. Theologian Stanley Hauerwas was a close friend and colleague, and he shared his recollections and reflections with CT late last month. This interview has been edited and condensed.
When you met, what was your first impression of Alasdair MacIntyre?
I was scared s—less. He had mental powers that were unusual, but I was also so taken with his work.
We may have first met at the University of Notre Dame, where he was giving lectures. After one lecture, there was a reception, and I was talking with Alasdair, and he said, “You and I ought to edit a series of books.” I was dumbfounded that he wanted me to be a joint editor. But we did an anthology of essays, Revisions, and continued to interact after that.
When I first discovered his work, After Virtue had not come out yet, but in my dissertation at Yale, I had hit upon the work of Aristotle and the importance of the virtues. At that point, Alasdair hadn’t yet really started to develop the theme of virtue, but he was doing a lot of philosophy and social science, and the moral psychology he was developing was quite compelling for me.
He could be very funny—like in Whose Justice, Which Rationality, he jokes about The New York Times as the village newspaper.
Or I was once talking to him when he was at Vanderbilt University. I said, “The world is really in terrible shape, and I don’t know what to do about it.” And Alasdair said, “Well, I do: Blow it up!” I said, “Alasdair, there are some people out there with some very big bombs. Are you really sure you would do it? I don’t know how you would do it.” And he said, “With matches.”
MacIntyre believed every human being has a natural desire for happiness, which is only achieved by union with God. I suppose that was later in his career, though, after he had departed from some of his early Marxist ideas and aligned more with Thomas Aquinas.
Well, he once remarked to me that he thought one of his major accomplishments as a thinker was to get Marxists and Thomists in discussion again, because he thought that they shared much in common—and I believe it’s true—that the moral philosophies of both Marx and Aquinas owed much to Aristotle. Alasdair thought Aristotelianism had an understanding of practical reason that produced people capable of reasoning well in a way that few other traditions could. One of the important intellectual developments for Alasdair was his understanding of Aquinas as being more Aristotelian than Aristotle himself.
In After Virtue, there’s a passage where he says the “problems of modern moral theory emerge clearly as the product of the failure of the Enlightenment project,” and so on. What that is suggesting is that his work involves historical development—he’s trying to show how the everyday lives of people, in fact, exhibit an intellectual position.
MacIntyre was a philosopher, and the lives of philosophers exhibit the cultural possibilities of any moment. But he did what many philosophers don’t do, and that’s read books that are not philosophy. I was talking to him a few weeks before he died, and I asked him what he was reading. He said, “Dante.” I mean, what philosophers read Dante?
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How did his work contribute to your own?
Well, I was developing accounts of virtue before Alasdair. That’s a silly thing to say, because what’s important is not who got there first but whether we have anything interesting to say.
One of his books that’s notable but too often ignored is Dependent Rational Animals . He challenges the Enlightenment presumption that what it means to be a human being is to be an independent entity in and of itself. That was a very important book for him.
He kidded and said that starting with A Short History of Ethics and running through After Virtue, Whose Justice, and Dependent Rational Animals, he had written a very long “short” book on the development of ethics. But each of those books has insights that are unique and need to be celebrated.
Also, every year, philosopher David Solomon had an event at Notre Dame in biomedical ethics, and every one of those years, Alasdair gave the keynote paper—and he didn’t publish any of them. So one of the things we have to look forward to is those papers coming out. I’m sure somebody’s thinking about it.
I think we also might call attention to his last book, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity. He ends the book with small biographies of four people to show how you need to display the lives of people in order to discover what it meant for them to reason in terms of practical character. And the people that he chose to highlight, many people would be surprised.
Is there anything else you want to convey to those who have limited familiarity with the work of Alasdair MacIntyre?
Don’t ignore him. Don’t ignore him, even though you may be intimidated by him.
