Philosopher · Contemporary
Alasdair MacIntyre
1929–2025 · Thomist Aristotelianism; tradition-constituted rationality
Scottish-born; Marxist, then Aristotelian, received into the Church in the early 1980s; professor at Notre Dame.
The author of “After Virtue” (1981), which argued that modern moral discourse is the fragmented wreckage of an Aristotelian tradition, that emotivism is its real content, and that we must choose “Nietzsche or Aristotle.” In “Whose Justice? Which Rationality?” and “Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry” he held that reason is always tradition-constituted and that Thomism is the tradition best able to account for its rivals; “Dependent Rational Animals” added the virtues of acknowledged dependence.
Why he matters: Made virtue ethics and Thomism central to Anglophone moral philosophy and gave Catholic thinkers a vocabulary for critiquing liberal modernity; the “Benedict Option” takes its name from his last page.
Where to be careful
His early Marxism survives in a sharp critique of capitalism and the modern state that some find excessive; his “tradition-constituted rationality” can be read as relativist, though he denied it.
School of Thomism · Analytic and Aristotelian Thomism
Anscombe, Geach, MacIntyre and the recent analytic Thomists: Thomas's ethics and philosophy of mind in conversation with Wittgenstein and Aristotle, strongest on action, intention and the virtues.
Others in this strand: G. E. M. Anscombe, G. K. Chesterton
Reading
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After VirtueAlasdair MacIntyre · The diagnosis of modern moral disorder.
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Three Rival Versions of Moral EnquiryAlasdair MacIntyre · Encyclopedia, genealogy and tradition; the case for Thomism.
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God, Philosophy, UniversitiesAlasdair MacIntyre · A short history of the Catholic philosophical tradition.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each question the test asks.