After Virtue, Chapter 10

After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition

Alasdair MacIntyre

University of Notre Dame Press, 1981, 2007

Chapter 10 — Let’s start at the very beginning: Primordial virtue in heroic societies

Epic poems provided foundations for ancient societies in many ways, including ethics. Ancient socities had well-defined roles in determinate systems. Virtues were embedded in the social structure; morality and social structure were basically the same thing. (This in contrast with detached emotivist self. )

Some more notes about the shape of his investigation:

1. All morality is tied to time & place; the modern attempt to achieve universality w/o any particularity is in vain (AM keeps harping on this)

2. Possession and understanding of virtues depends on the tradition through which we receive them, which begins with the heroic era.

Key elements of heroic conceptual scheme:

1. social role

2. virtues (excellences) which enable success in the role

3. fragility and mortality

Narrative epic form gives unitary framework to all three

The ancient/heroic self is a social creation. Nietzche anacrhonistically projected an individualist self onto heroic culture.