Moral philosophy
Alasdair MacIntyre
1929 – 2025
Supplies the word the book leans on: practice, with standards internal to it — and the warning that institutions reliably corrode those standards in pursuit of external reward.
Read alongside: Shape
- Start with
- After Virtue (1981)
- Where they resist the book
- MacIntyre is deeply sceptical that managerial life can host a practice at all. The book borrows his term against his conclusion.
Works worth the time
After Virtue · 1981
The source of practice as a word with standards inside it — and of the warning about institutions.
Read further
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Alasdair MacIntyre ↗
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Wikipedia: Alasdair MacIntyre ↗
Wikipedia
Where MacIntyre appears
Judgement is a virtue, not a procedure.
Aristotle's phronesis is practical wisdom: knowing what this situation asks, which no rule can supply in advance. Arendt insists that action is unpredictable and irreversible, and that its remedy is not control but promise and forgiveness. MacIntyre supplies the word the book leans on — practice, with standards internal to it.
A practice is sustained by its internal standards.
Hadot reads ancient philosophy as spiritual exercise — something done daily, not concluded. MacIntyre distinguishes goods internal to a practice from external rewards, and warns how reliably institutions corrode the first in pursuit of the second. Kierkegaard supplies the honesty: understanding backwards, living forwards.