Alasdair Macintyre Quotes

The hypothesis I wish to advance is thatthe language of morality is ingrave disorder ... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have
very largely if not entirely
lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

All power tends to coopt, and absolute power coopts absolutely. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

I have confronted theoretical positions whose protagonists claim that what I take to be historically produced characteristics of what is specifically modern are in fact the timelessly necessary characteristics of all and any moral judgment, of all and any selfhood. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

There is no chain of philosophical reasoning or method of philosophical enquiry through which we can arrive at the truths of faith as conclusions. But once by faith we have acknowledged those truths we are able to understand why there is good reason to acknowledge them. This, as he was to argue a little later, is because of the effects of sin on the human mind. It is "because human minds are obscured by familiarity with darkness, which covers them in a night of sins and bad habits, and are unable to perceive with the clarity and purity proper to reason" that authority has been provided to bring "the faltering eye into the light of truth" (De moribus ecclesiae catholicae 31.2.31). ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

The characterization of actions allegedly prior to any narrative form being imposed upon them will always turn out to be the presentation of what are plainly the disjointed parts of some possible narrative. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

It is yet another of Nietzsche's merits that he joins to his critique of Enlightenment moralities a sense of their failure to address adequately, let alone to answer the question: what sort of person am I to become? This is in a way an inescapable question in that an answer to it is given in practice in each human life. But for characteristically modern moralities it is a question to be approached only by indirection. The primary question from their standpoint has concerned rules: what rules ought we to follow? ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

Kant was right; morality did in the eighteenth century, as a matter of historical fact, presuppose something very like the teleological scheme of God, freedom and happiness as the final crown of virtue which Kant propounds. Detach morality from that framework and you will no longer have morality; or, at the very least, you will have radically transformed its character. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

Individuals inherit a particular space within an interlocking set of social relationships; lacking that space, they are nobody, or at best a stranger or an outcast. To know oneself as such a social person is however not to occupy a static and fixed position. It is to find oneself placed at a certain point on a journey with set goals; to move through life is to make progress - or to fail to make progress - toward a given end. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

The good life for man is the life spent in seeking for the good life for man, and the virtues necessary for the seeking are those which will enable us to understand what more and what else the good life for man is. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

Deprive the taboo rules of their original context, and they at once are apt to appear as a set of arbitrary prohibitions, as indeed they characteristically do appear when the initial context is lost, when those background beliefs in the light of which the taboo rules had originally been understood have not only been abandoned but forgotten.
In such a situation the rules have been deprived of any status that can secure their authority, and, if they do not acquire some new status quickly, both their interpretation and their justification become debatable. When the resources of a culture are too meagre to carry through the task of reinterpretation, the task of justification becomes impossible. Hence perhaps the relatively easy, although to some contemporary observers astonishing, victory of Kamehameha II over the taboos (and the creation thereby of a vacuum in which the banalities of the New England Protestant missionaries were received all too quickly). ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

There is no way to understand the character of the taboo rules, except as a survival from some previous more elaborate cultural background. We know also and as a consequence that any theory which makes the taboo rules ... intelligible just as they are without any reference to their history is necessarily a false theory ... why should we think about [the theories of] analytic moral philosophers such as Moore, Ross, Prichard, Stevenson, Hare and the rest in any different way? ... Why should we think about our modern use of good, right and obligatory in any different way from that in which we think about late eighteenth-century Polynesian uses of taboo? ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

Virtues are dispositions not only to act in particular ways, but also to feel in particular ways. To act virtuously is not, as Kant was later to think, to act against inclination; it is to act from inclination formed by the cultivation of the virtues. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

Indeed, one of the functions of the structures of normality is that by making it unnecessary for almost everybody almost all the time to provide justifications for what they are doing or are about to do, they relieve us of what would otherwise be an intolerable burden. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

Augustine's final verdict on the philosophers of Greece
and Rome was that, although they had made various mistakes, "nature itself has not permitted them to wander too far from the path of truth" in their judgments about the supreme good (De Civitate Dei 19.1). ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

The medieval world then is one in which not only is the scheme of the virtues enlarged beyond an Aristotelian perspective, but above all in which the connection between the distinctively narrative element in human life and the character of the vices comes to the forefront of consciousness and not only in biblical terms. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

Plato in both the Gorgias and the Republic looked back to Socrates and asserted that "it is better to suffer tortures on the rack than to have a soul burdened with the guilt of doing evil." Aristotle does not confront this position directly: he merely emphasizes that it is better still both to be free from having done evil and to be free from being tortured on the rack. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

[M]odern society is indeed often, at least in surface appearance, nothing but a collection of strangers, each pursuing his or her own interests under minimal constraints. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

In his book After Virtue, philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre likened the present cultural moment to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. He argued that the West has abandoned reason and the tradition of the virtues in giving itself over to the relativism that is now flooding our world today. We are governed not by faith, or by reason, or by any combination of the two. We are governed by what MacIntyre called emotivism: the idea that all moral choices are nothing more than expressions of what the choosing individual feels is right. MacIntyre ~ Rod Dreher

One of the things I have always most admired about Alasdair MacIntyre's work is the particular kind of intellectual courage it exhibits. This virtue manifests itself in a number of ways, including a willingness to adress large philosophical questions head-on and to give straightforward answers to them. This is a form of courage, rather than merely of some other more etiolated cognitive excellence, because giving relatively bald and unvarnished answers to big questions makes it difficult to avoid facing up to the implications of what one says for action, and the action involved might be of a kind that requires exhausting, deeply disruptive, and potentially radical changes in the way one lives. ~ Raymond Geuss

What am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question 'Of what story or stories do I find myself a part? ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

To have understood the polymorphous character of pleasure and happiness is of course to have rendered those concepts useless for utilitarian purposes; if the prospect of his or her own future pleasure or happiness cannot for reasons which I have suggested provide criteria for solving the problems of action in the case of each individual, it follows that the notion of the greatest happiness of the greatest number is a notion without any clear content at all. It is indeed a pseudo-concept available for a variety of ideological uses, but no more than that. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

The self-assertive shrillness of protest arises because the facts of incommensurability ensure that protestors can never win an argument; the indignant self-righteousness of protest arises because the facts of incommensurability ensure equally that the protestors can never lose an argument either. Hence the utterance of protest is characteristically addressed to those who already share the protestors' premises. The effects of incommensurability ensure that protestors rarely have anyone else to talk to but themselves. This is not to say that protest cannot be effective; it is to say that it cannot be rationally effective and that its dominant modes of expression give evidence of a certain perhaps unconscious awareness of this. The ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

For by either eliminating mention of God from the curriculum altogether (departments of religious studies concern themselves with various types of belief in God, not with God), or by restricting reference to God to departments of theology, such universities render their secular curriculum Godless. And this Godlessness is, as I already noted, not just a matter of the subtraction of God from the range of objects studied, but also and quite as much the absence of any integrated and overall view of things. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

We are so accustomed to classifying judgments, arguments and deeds in terms of morality that we forget how relatively new the notion was in the culture of the Enlightenment. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

A striking feature of moral and political argument in the modern world is the extent to which it is innovators, radicals, and revolutionaries who revive old doctrines, while their conservative and reactionary opponents are the inventors of new ones. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the world's most influential living moral philosophers. He has written 30 books on ethics and held a variety of professorial chairs over the past four decades in North America. ~ John Cornwell

To cry out that the emperor had no clothes on was at least to pick on one man only to the amusement of everyone else; to declare that almost everyone is dressed in rags is much less likely to be popular. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

Charles II once invited the members of the Royal Society to explain to him why a dead fish weighs more than the same fish alive; a number of subtle explanations were offered to him. He then pointed out that it does not. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

History is neither a prison nor a museum, nor is it a set of materials for self-congratulation. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

We are not waiting for a Godot, but for another-doubtless very different-St. Benedict. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

What this brings out is that modern politics cannot be a matter of genuine moral consensus. And it is not. Modern politics is civil war carried on by other means, ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

At the foundation of moral thinking lie beliefs in statements the truth of which no further reason can be given. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves out to achieve instead - often not recognizing fully what they were doing - was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming age of barbarism and darkness. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

We are never more (and sometimes less) than the co-authors of our own narratives. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

Those emotive theorists who said that the function of moral utterance was to evince emotion would ... have been correct if they had substituted the indefinite for the definite article. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

I can be said truly to know who and what I am only because there are others who can be said truly to know who and what I am. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

For Kant one can be both good and stupid; but for Aristotle stupidity of a certain kind precludes goodness. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

At least some of the items in a Homeric list of the aretai would clearly not be counted by most of us nowadays as virtues at all, physical strength being the most obvious example. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

Modern systematic politics, whether liberal, conservative, radical or socialist, simply has to be rejected from a standpoint that owes genuine allegiance to the tradition of the virtues; for modern politics itself expresses in its institutional forms a systematic rejection of that tradition. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

J.B. Bury once followed Pascal in suggesting that the cause of the foundation of the Roman Empire was the length of Cleopatra's nose: had her features not been perfectly proportioned, Mark Antony would not have been entranced; had he not been entranced he would not have allied himself with Egypt against Octavian; had he not made that alliance, the battle of Actium would not have been fought - and so on. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

Man is essentially a story-telling animal, but a teller of stories that aspire to truth. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

Raymond Aron ascribes to Weber the view that 'each man's conscience is irrefutable.' ... while [Weber] holds that an agent may be more or less rational in acting consistently with his values, the choice of any one particular evaluative stance or commitment can be no more rational than any other. All faiths and all evaluations are equally non-rational ... ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

To call the Form [of the Good] eternal is misleading: that something lasts forever does not render it any the better, any more than long-enduring whiteness is whiter than ephemeral whiteness. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

One of the key moments in the creation of modernity occurs when production moves outside the household. So long as productive work occurs within the structure of households, it is easy and right to understand that work as part of the sustaining of the community of the household and of those wider forms of community which the household in turn sustains. As, and to the extent that, work moves outside the household and is put to the service of impersonal capital, the realm of work tends to become separated from everything but the service of biological survival and the reproduction of the labor force, on the one hand, and that of institutionalized acquisitiveness, on the other. Pleonexia, a vice in the Aristotelian scheme, is now the driving force of modern productive work. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

The mock rationality of the debate conceals the arbitrariness of the will and power at work in its resolution. It ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

Contemporary moral argument is rationally interminable, because all moral, indeed all evaluative, argument is and always must be rationally interminable. Contemporary moral disagreements of a certain kind cannot be resolved, because no moral disagreements of that kind in any age, past, present or future, can be resolved. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

As the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre suggests, the story in which I believe myself to be a character is also the story in which I come to understand my nature and my destiny.1 My sense of who I am, where I should be heading, and what I should do next - I "own" all these in the context of what I believe to be true about the world, its history and destiny, the nature of divinity and humanity, and the good society. It is all very much bound up with the story in which I believe I find myself. ~ Iain W. Provan

The choice between the ethical and the aesthetic is not the choice between good and evil, it is the choice whether or not to choose in terms of good and evil. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

Do not however suppose that the conclusion to be drawn will turn out to be one of despair. Angst is an intermittently fashionable emotion and the misreading of some existentialist texts has turned despair itself into a kind of psychological nostrum. But if we are indeed in as bad a state as I take us to be, pessimism too will turn out to be one more cultural luxury that we shall have to dispense with in order to survive in these hard times. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

The idea that this end of philosophy - at least, of political philosophy and (I claim) moral philosophy - has close relations with history overlaps with a more ambitious view held by a consistently underestimated Oxford philosopher, R. G. Collingwood. The trouble with Collingwood's kind of commitment is that it requires one to know some history. My two associates in the view I am sketching are Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor. They are both Roman Catholics, though of different sorts. I used to find this a disquieting fact but no longer do so. All three of us, I could say, accept the significant role of Christianity in understanding modern moral consciousness, and adopt respectively the three possible views about how to move in relation to that: backward in it, forward in it, and out of it. In any case, we all assume some historical commitments, they on a more ambitious scale than I, and perhaps there is a rather nervous competition for who writes the most irresponsible history. ~ Bernard Williams

Only bad religions depend on mysteries, just as bad governments depend on secret police.
A character's response to a discussion about eating from the tree of knowledge. ~ Alasdair Gray

Trotsky's view that the gap between aspiration and achievement will be a permanent feature of human life, so that tragedy will be permanently relevant to the contemporary human experience, seems far more faithful to Marx's view ... ~ Alasdair McIntyre

'The Man Who Never Was,' by Ewen Montagu, remains the best book about wartime espionage written by an active participant - incomplete, and dry in parts, it nonetheless summons up the ingenuity and sheer eccentricity of those who played this strange and dangerous game. ~ Ben Macintyre

The policemen agreed they were living with a most peculiar fellow. One moment he was reading classical literature in the original French and quoting Tennyson, and the next he would be discussing the best way to blow up a train. ~ Ben Macintyre

They say the first of my kind was Alasdair, a human raised by hawks. She learned the languages of birds and was gifted with their form. ~ Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

You suffer from the oldest delusion in politics. You think you can change the world by talking to a leader. Leaders are the effects, not the causes of changes. ~ Alasdair Gray

Baxter knows a lot more than I do, I told her.
Yes, said Baxter, but I will never tell people all of it. ~ Alasdair Gray

Life becomes a habit. You get up, dress, eat, go tae work, clock in etcetera etcetera automatically, and think about nothing but the pay packet on Friday and the booze-up last Saturday. Life's easy when you're a robot. ~ Alasdair Gray

You, dear reader, have now two accounts to choose between and there can be no doubt which is most probable. ~ Alasdair Gray

Once more, one who lives in the spirit of prayer will spend much time in retired and intimate communion with God. It is by such a deliberate engagement of prayer that the fresh springs of devotion which flow through the day are fed. For, although communion with God is the life-energy of the renewed nature, our souls "cleave to the dust" and devotion tends to grow formal- it becomes emptied of its spiritual content, and exhausts itself in outward acts. The Master reminds us of this grave peril, and informs us that the true defense against insincerity in our approach to God lies in the diligent exercise of private prayer. ~ David Macintyre

A willingness to offer advice on matters that are quite beyond the ken of the adviser seems to be a habit in this part of the world. ~ Alex Macintyre

What will I do when you're gone?" said Alasdair, with a faltering voice.
Bryeison placed a hand on his shoulder and said, with raging tranquility, "Do what is good and what is right. ~ Michelle Franklin

The world sometimes seems a chessboard where the pieces move themselves. I'm never sure what square to go to. Yet it can't be a difficult game, most folk play it instinctively. ~ Alasdair Gray

Eccentricity is one of those English traits that look like frailty but mask a concealed strength; individuality disguised as oddity. ~ Ben Macintyre

Alasdair yanked a pillow, shoving it under his arse. "I think you'll find I'm a heavy but remarkably fit and supple git, thank you very much." He spread his legs wide open and leered.
"With real self-esteem issues." Cosmo deadpanned.
"I will have if you don't hurry up and make love to me."
"Make love?" Aww, that's sweet."
"Less talking. More shagging."
"Yes, boss!" Cosmo saluted with his free hand ... ~ Josephine Myles

The world is only improved by people who do ordinary jobs and refuse to be bullied. ~ Alasdair Gray

The broad outlines of the Double Cross deception have been known since 1972, when Sir John Masterman, the former chairman of the double agent committee, controversially published his account of the operation in defiance of official secrecy. ~ Ben Macintyre

I tried to scream like you once screamed God since I wanted to make the whole world faint but Harry Astley clapped his hand over my mouth O the sheer joy of feeling my teeth sink in. ~ Alasdair Gray

You can't make people the way you want them to be, Alasdair. Sometimes you just have to love them how they are. ~ Mackenzi Lee

the illusion is encouraged that philosophy is an irrelevant, abstract subject - part of the decoration of a cultured life perhaps, but unnecessary in and even distracting from the activities of the practical world. The truth is, however, that all nontrivial activity presupposed some philosophical point of view and that not to recognize this is to make oneself the ready victim of bad or at the very least inadequate philosophy. ~ Michael Macintyre

Vivian was not alone in thinking that a man who spent so much time discussing table tennis was probably a spy. ~ Ben Macintyre

John [Lennon] as a singer - the way he sings on "Twist and Shout" and the way he sings on "Strawberry Fields Forever" - is a very odd voice, in the sense that it seems to be celebrating but almost mourning at the same time. There's a quality of mourning to his voice, which is very enigmatic. ~ Alasdair MacLean

Libraries are not just for reading in, but for sociable thinking, exploring, exchanging ideas and falling in love. They were never silent. Technology will not change that, for even in the starchiest heyday of Victorian self-improvement, libraries were intended to be meeting places of the mind, recreational as well as educational. ~ Ben Macintyre

He watched them with the passionate regret with which he saw them play football or go to dances: the activity itself did not interest, but the power to share it would have made him less apart. ~ Alasdair Gray

I think that's everything," she said, rising to her feet. "Thank you, Mr. MacIntyre."
He shook his head. "Lucas. Or the deal is off."
She pressed her lips together. "All right. Lucas. And I must tell you, I don't particularly care for you shortening my name. Emily is perfectly fine."
"I know, Em. I'll keep that in mind. ~ Susan Mallery

I clenched my teeth and fists to stop them biting and scratching these clever men who want no care for the helpless sick small, who use religions and politics to stay comfortably superior to all that pain: who make religions and politics, excuses to spread misery with fire and sword and how could I stop all this? I did not know what to do. ~ Alasdair Gray

People who care nothing for their country's stories and songs,' he said, 'are like people without a past- without a memory- they are half people ~ Alasdair Gray

Britain's counterespionage officers saw signs of treachery in everything Ivor Montagu did: they saw it in his friends, his appearance, his opinions, and his behavior. But above all, they saw it in his passionate, and dubious, love of table tennis. ~ Ben Macintyre

Imaginatively Glasgow exists as a music hall song and a few bad novels. ~ Alasdair Gray

In a craven and hierarchical organization, the only thing more dangerous in revealing your own ignorance, is to draw attention to the stupidity of the boss. ~ Ben Macintyre

Movement turns dead dogs into maggots and daisies, and flour butter sugar an egg and a tablespoon of milk into Abernethy biscuits, and spermatozoa and ovaries into fishy little plants growing babyward if we take no care to stop them. ~ Alasdair Gray

John Masterman once wrote: Sometimes in life27 you feel that there is something which you must do, and in which you must trust your own judgment and not that of any other person. Some call it conscience and some plain obstinacy. Well, you can take your choice. ~ Ben Macintyre

The body of the last Flealouse contained the flesh of everything that had ever lived. It was content. ~ Alasdair Gray

The word most consistently used to describe Kim Philby was "charm", that intoxicating, beguiling and occasionally lethal English quality. ~ Ben Macintyre

Sam Brewer enjoyed discussing Middle Eastern politics with Philby; Philby enjoyed sleeping with his wife. ~ Ben Macintyre

Tell me, Dr. Lanark, is there a connection between your love of vast panorama and your distate for human problems? ~ Alasdair Gray

Readers develop unique histories with the books they read. It may not be immediately apparent at the time of reading, but the person you were when you read the book, the place you were where you
read the book, your state of mind while you read it, your personal situation (happy, frustrated,
depressed, bored) and so on – all these factors, and others, make the simple experience of reading a
book a far more complex and multi-layered affair than might be thought. ~ Alasdair Gray

Like all truly selfish people, Kliemann believed the minutiae of his life must be fascinating to all. ~ Ben Macintyre

But leaders need to be mostly dead. People want solid monuments to cling to, not confused men like themselves. ~ Alasdair Gray

Lanark said irritably, "You seem to understand my questions, but your answers make no sense to me."
"That's typical of life, isn't it? ~ Alasdair Gray

Blood is everything when it comes to magic. ~ Alasdair of the Fae ~ Riley Shane

But one may acquire what MacIntyre calls a "second first language," a language which is learned in the same way that a child learns to use the native tongue. A missionary or an anthropologist who really hopes to understand and enter into the adopted culture will not do so by trying to learn the language in the way a tourist uses a phrasebook and a dictionary. ~ Lesslie Newbigin

I distrust speech therapy. Words are the language of lies and evasions. Music cannot lie. Music talks to the heart. ~ Alasdair Gray

This was a wonderfully surreal moment: the real Montagu addressing his fictional persona, in a work of filmic fiction, based on reality, which had originated in fiction. ~ Ben Macintyre

The fatal conceit of most spies is to believe they are loved, in a relationship between equals, and not merely manipulated. ~ Ben Macintyre