MacIntyre on money

The influential moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has long stood outside the mainstream. Has the financial crisis finally vindicated his critique of global capitalism?

by John Cornwell / October 20, 2010 / Leave a comment
Published in November 2010 issue of Prospect Magazine

Alasdair MacIntyre argues for a single, shared view of the good life

The man in a modest dark suit and grey shirt could be mistaken, save for the presence of his wife of 33 years, for an off-duty Benedictine abbot. We’re dining in the elegant ambience of the Cambridge Catholic university chaplaincy; the conversation is animated, but the man, an 81-year-old philosopher, contents himself with a glass of water, leaving the dishes and vintage claret untouched. Self-effacing, a trifle austere, he nevertheless exudes a benign humanity from the top of his monkish haircut to his scuffed toe-caps.

Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the world’s most influential living moral philosophers. He has written 30 books on ethics and held a variety of professorial chairs over the past four decades in North America. Blending ideas from ancient Greece and medieval Christendom (with an admixture of Marxism), MacIntyre writes and lectures on the failings and discontents of “advanced modernity.” This summer he accepted an invitation from Prospect and Jesus College, Cambridge to talk to a group of academics on the economic disaster that capitalism has inflicted on itself and the world.

MacIntyre has often given the impression of a robe-ripping Savonarola. He has lambasted the heirs to the principal western ethical schools: John Locke’s social contract, Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian “the greatest happiness for the greatest number.” Yet his is not a lone voice in the wilderness. He can claim connections with a trio of 20th-century intellectual heavyweights: the late Elizabeth Anscombe, her surviving husband, Peter Geach, and the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, winner in 2007 of the Templeton prize. What all four have in common is their Catholic faith, enthusiasm for Aristotle’s telos (life goals), and promotion of Thomism, the philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas who married Christianity and Aristotle. Leo XIII (pope from 1878 to 1903), who revived Thomism while condemning communism and unfettered capitalism, is also an influence.

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Comments

Cathal Coleman
October 29, 2010 at 10:12
Is the MacIntyre Prospect lecture available online or being published separately?
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jim evans
November 12, 2010 at 12:51
Maybe I am thick but this chap reminds me of trying to understand Karl Popper and his pupil George Soros. It`s not that they lack high ideals or intellect ....but rather that intuition tells one that it will all end in tears as we ordinary higher primates struggle to make sense of their nebulous miscellany of (impractical?) ideas. Let them describe how they would convert Britain into an example of their ideal society so that we can get the measure of this paradise they would create......and NOT by telling us what it wouldn`t be like....that`s far too easy!
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Artnesten
November 15, 2010 at 22:38
One important point regarding many criticisms of MacIntyre's vision seems neglected: the current state of civilization in the world is a product of hundreds of years of development by millions of political/economic/cultural leaders. It seems not only unfair but unrealistic to demand some kind of confidently detailed explanation of what things might have looked like if things went differently in the past two hundred years. Similarly, is it reasonable to demand that an alternative vision create in a couple election cycles the same successes as liberal democratic capitalism did in a century? The point is that progress comes with time, and no one knows the future. What we do know is the present and specifically the kinds of cultural disorders and injustices embodied in the practices and regimes of the economies of late modernity. Why not decide to do the right things that we know and let the developments arise over time, instead of demanding the impossible?
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jim evans
November 16, 2010 at 15:04
I think it would help us all if we had a major global truth and reconciliation process aimed at giving people the information and understanding whereby they can analyse recent history and current political economic and social affairs for themselves. I have been living in a Britain that hoodwinks its voters about what has been happening in the past and what our future options are. It`s only recently that I fully grasped how the USA effectively took over control of Britain between the world wars and that it`s to benefit US investors that we are hostages in the EU,for example. Wheras most people in the UK could be excused for believing that we could be independent again if we left the EU.And our politicians and media appear to have no investment in diasabusing them.
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Chrysostom
November 19, 2010 at 12:20
I am not getting at this man in particular, but I consider your quotation: " He was drawn early to Karl Marx and his first book was a defence of Marxism, although like many other intellectuals he changed his opinion of the Soviet Union after its suppression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising." Are we supposed to be impressed by these "intellectuals" who stomached all that Stalin did, all that happened in the Soviet Union? The famines? The slaughters? The non-aggression pact with Hitler? The Katyn massacre? The iron curtain? The murder of millions in Soviet-occupied Europe? The Gulag? Everything before the Hungarian Uprising when the penny finally dropped? Truly, one has to be an "intellectual" to be thus. I must thank God every day that most of us are not "intellectuals".
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Ramesh Raghuvanshi
November 19, 2010 at 17:52
Globalization is not responsible for unemployment or debt. Globalization came from new communication system and other science progress that one is need of our age.Unemployment and debt or other calamities came on us by our extreme greediness our foolishness and our mistake.Man is by nature too much selfish he never understand how keep control on himself , we have to learn self discipline,reduce our selfishness.We Must understand we could not stop progress of science. We must use it for well being of mankind,
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Robert Landbeck
November 19, 2010 at 22:22
By stating: "we have already entered a new age of “darkness and barbarism”, Mr. Macintyre acknowledges by default that his Catholic tradition has no means to stem that tide an nothing to put in it's place. So to begin rebuilding our conception of common good will require 'something' greater than what existing religious tradition with it's natural law ethics and theory, Catholic or otherwise has as yet provided humanity. And that something has already happened. What both science and religion thought impossible has been discovered. History now has it's first fully demonstrable proof for faith. And it's come from outside all existing faiths. Theology is about to become irrelevant. Quoting a forum review: \The first ever viable religious conception capable of leading reason, by faith, to observable consequences which can be tested and judged is now a reality. A teaching that delivers the first ever religious claim of insight into the human condition that meets the Enlightenment criteria of verifiable, direct cause and effect, evidence based truth embodied in experience. For the first time in history, however unexpected, the world must contend with a claim to new revealed truth, a moral wisdom not of human intellectual origin, offering access by faith, to absolute proof, an objective basis for moral principle and a fully rational and justifiable belief! \ A moral and intellectual revolution is getting under way with an individual, spiritual/virtue/ethical conception, independent of all cultural perception, contained within a single moral command. The most potent NVDA ever imagined. More info http://www.energon.org.uk
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Ted Schrey Montreal
November 20, 2010 at 03:09
The venerable Alasdair MacIntyre's various views waft across to me as a breath of stale air. In other words, I quite agree with much of what he says, which is something that disturbs me almost daily. It's all old hat, really. It is altogether unclear (to me) how the individual can adhere, or subscribe, to abstract concepts (e.g. virtue) upon which our existence is assumed to be based and by which it is assumed to be guided--as the moral philosopher must believe--and yet remain a uniquely dynamic, living entity. It just doesn't seem to make sense. The trouble with globalisation is of course that it worked when much of the world was in no position to argue and compete with the economic powers nicely huddled together in the north-west of europe and, later on, parts further west. Late-model modernity, in contrast, takes jobs away from traditional centers of production and invention. No wonder it is all beginning to look rather evil and barbarous.
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Ted Schrey Montreal
November 20, 2010 at 03:17
'Debt' is only a vice when the economic system no longer has any spring in its step--or so it seems to me. I cringe, for example, when I hear how well General Motors is doing again. It's as if one is supposed to believe India and China, Europe and Brazil, and others, are meekly stepping back to make room for tradition. But I still think American cars suck. They always did. And they still do. It is called 'absence of real change'.
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Ted Schrey Montreal
November 20, 2010 at 05:45
"Through...everyday social practices... people develop appropriate virtues", according to MacIntyre. Then a little later: "the Enlightenment's most damaging consequence [was] the decline of the idea...an individual's desires are disciplined by virtue. Which in turn led to a shift in emphasis from 'internal' to 'external' "goods". From virtue to money. And from there to the dismaying realisation there's more money than virtue around in modern times. That may be, but it is hard to believe virtue and money have much to do with each other. I certainly hate to think money makes virtuous, or that being virtuous will lead to riches. Unless one is a oldfashioned Calvinist, of course.
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Madrid
November 23, 2010 at 00:22
Neither the reporter nor the commentators below seems to have understood anything of MacIntyre's critique of the global financial system. That's a pity, because his lecture was comprehensible with a bit more explanation of Aristotle and Aquinas.
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Colin Cordner
November 23, 2010 at 00:44
"It is altogether unclear (to me) how the individual can adhere, or subscribe, to abstract concepts (e.g. virtue) upon which our existence is assumed to be based and by which it is assumed to be guided–as the moral philosopher must believe–and yet remain a uniquely dynamic, living entity. It just doesn’t seem to make sense." Mr. Schrey, I'd submit that the answer is actually provided by getting into the definition of virtue which is posited by Aristotle and Aquinas, and therefor accepted by Mr. MacIntyre. Simply put -- Aristotle's virtues are not abstractions (i.e. laws or maxims). Rather, they are a form of personal, human excellence which are both developed and expressed through activity. I.e. courage lies in acting courageously, prudence in acting prudently. Those "excellences" themselves are determined, by Aristotle as well as by the others, through the analysis of the limits, possibilities, and necessities of human existence, with a view towards it's meaning and purpose. The main questions are thus whether to accept or reject the arguments that i) virtue is an activity, and ii) human existence has meaning and purpose related to that activity.
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Sue
November 23, 2010 at 11:01
Alasdair is quite famous for his barbarians inside the gates sentence. Why then as an esteemed well known public Catholic intellectual and moral philosopher does he not put his principles on the line and make some public statements re who he considers these barbarians to be, or at the very least groups, organizations and political parties? Especially in the context of the now very polarized situation in the USA where he lives. In a similar fashion to Noam Chomsky, Juan Cole and the late Howard Zinn all of whom are/were not afraid to call a spade a spade.
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Chris Floyd
November 23, 2010 at 16:59
Sue -- Howard Zinn! That's a laugh. Mr. MacIntyre does tend to talk mostly about the upper reaches of philosophy and not politics. Not surprising, since he's a philosopher. But in 2004 he gave his opinion on the American political situation when he declared neither candidate was worth voting for. http://vox-nova.com/2007/12/18/macintyres-revolutionary-proposal/
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Sue
November 24, 2010 at 02:14
Yes Howard Zinn. He spent an entire lifetime speaking the Truth to the military-industrial-complex that has dominated USA culture and politics for the past years. Unlike "lofty" abstract philosophers he was fully prepared to get his hands dirty by engaging in and supporting all sorts of groups who were attempting to resist the Mega-machine. He inspired countless thousands of people to see and do things differently. He had no time for the lofty double-minded sophistries of "Thomism". His role model was more like Thomas the Tank Engine - yes we can resist the Mega-machine and live humanely and decently and try to create a decent life affirming culture. He was a true USA patriot who unlike many of the chicken-hawks that infest the "conservative" side of USA politics and religion, actually did active front-line service in World-War II.
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Tom Brookes
November 26, 2010 at 16:59
He's right in a great many respects, I agree that money, along with a few other institutions, are eating away at the moral fabric of society & humanity. My only issue with articles like this is in some of the language- 'think like Aristotle, think like such-&-such'- quite frankly I think it's time that we all stopped telling each other how to think, or thinking of ways for other people to think. Touch convoluted I know; but it's easier to appeal to emotions than to reason. Tell anyone what to do, especially what to think- & if it's different to an established norm- like a lot of these ideas are- & it's a hard pill to swallow; particularly when pitted against vested financial self interests. Maybe it's time we starting preaching principles rather than methodologies- reason, morality & empathy. Once people believe these are decent human principles they can be applied to all social & political institutions the world over, for everyone's benefit- who could think that's a bad thing? But I worry that it won't work if we try & coerce or force people to live differently, or go about it by telling people that 'this is right, you are wrong'... it's basic psychology but telling someone something isn't anything like as effective as letting them see it for themselves. So, as a society, I think we need to start by setting a good example, & the rest of the world will follow suit when they realise what they're missing out on. That's human nature too. Or maybe I'm just hopelessly optimistic.
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informed commentator
November 28, 2010 at 02:45
The overview is good, but the critique is tendentious and weak. That's all that needs to be said.
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michael shanks
November 29, 2010 at 18:33
is it possible to have the straight MacIntyre without the Cornwell comment which is rather arrogant? Can anyone tell me where I can get the MacIntyre text?
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Bruce Mazlish
January 27, 2011 at 02:11
Globalization is a complex process or series of processes. Macintyre, along with many others, especially economists, seem to think it is mainly economic in cause and effect. This demonstrates a very shallow view of this historical phenomenon. It is a political, social, and cultural affair, along with being economic, with one of its most exciting prospects being the development of global consciousness and a consciousness of the globe.It is a subject for profound study and reflection, rising far beyond the mere taking of sides. Bruce Mazlish Professor of History Emeritus, MIT
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Daniel
February 20, 2011 at 13:44
Are you commenting on anything MacIntyre has said Bruce? I don't think he would deny that globalisation is more than economics -- he is merely objecting to some of the immoral consequences for the smaller, self-sufficient societies he thinks are better suited for the good life and the separation of what people do in a globalised economy from the consequences of their acts (they're hard to keep track of).
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John
June 15, 2011 at 23:25
I don't know what all the fuss is about in relation to Black Swans MacIntyre was addressing the issue of unpredictably and the implication of the claims of managers years ago.
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