MacIntyre Against Morality

Readers interested in Christian apologetics, or ones looking to an eminent Catholic philosopher to berate and defeat atheists and secularists, should not turn to this book for comfort or guidance, and if they do, the prominence of Marx may occasion disappointment. MacIntyre is here engaged in a more extensive and more charitable task: to address readers, be they believers or unbelievers, who wonder how moral reasoning can lead to true answers. He brings to that task almost seventy years of sustained and disciplined thinking since writing his MA thesis on “The Significance of Moral Judgements,” a title that equally well summarizes this major and crowning study, which completes, so far as anything of the sort can be completed, the long investigation begun with After Virtue. MacIntyre's many insights have attracted a wide and diverse following. Those who carry on the project that this book and its predecessors represent are likely to find that what began as reasoning about ethical conflict and human nature will lead one day to recognition, and (one hopes) contemplation, of the divine.