MacIntyre on Moral Justification - Partially Examined Life

On Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (1981), mostly ch. 3-7 and 14-17.

What justifies ethical claims? MacIntyre claims that no modern attempt to ground ethics has worked, and that’s because we've abandoned Aristotle. We see facts and values as fundamentally different: the things science discovers vs. these weird things that have nothing to do with science. In Aristotle’s teleological view, everything comes with built-in goals, so just as a plant will aim grow green and healthy, people have a definite kind of virtue towards which we do and should naturally strive. Though MacIntyre doesn't want to bring back Aristotle’s biology, he does want to put the goal-directedness, i.e. the normativity, back into our conception of the facts of our lives. #Philosophy #macintyre #ethics #metaethics #virtue

Go to the blog: http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2012/07/05/ep59