After Virtue, Chapter 3 [Notes]

After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition

Alasdair MacIntyre

University of Notre Dame Press, 1981, 2007

Chapter 3 - sociological analysis of widely-held emotivism in action

Everything is manipulation (contrast w/ Kant’s ideal morality in which manipulation — treating others as means rather than ends — is wrong)

Analysis of three “characters” / moral representatives of modern society (identities where character merges with individual identity, normative requirements are imposed from the outside, and the character is an object of social regard, a focal point of debate):

1. bureaucratic manager — ends are neutral, it’s efficiency that counts (also, power=authority); obliteration of distinction between manipulative and nonmanipulative social relations

2. wealthy aesthete, pursuer of his own enjoyment

3. therapist — manipulation in private life (I would also include teacher/educator here)

1&3 operate in terms of effectiveness, not moral debate; ethical questions are left to one side.

(key aside, p.30-31 — psychological effectiveness has replaced truth as the aim of education & religion)

The emotivist self: detached view from nowhere, singular moral agent with no necessary social identity. (See Sartre on self’s lack of content or essence — also Hume etc. on self’s lack of continuity ala buddhism) No goals, no rational/objective means of evaluating one’s life.

Is this self a deprivation, specifically deprived of telos?

Contrast with pre-modern identity: bound up in social membership (brother, member of tribe, etc.) with set goals.

Back to social context:

There’s been a bifurcation of (a) value-judgments, delegated to detached individual [internal self] and (b) manipulation, delegated to bureaucratic organizations [external world]. This sets the stage for debate between individual liberty (republicans, classical liberalism) and social planning and regulation (democrats, socialists) as the only two options. (key passage p. 34-35)