“The attempted professionalization of serious and systematic thinking has had a disastrous effect upon our culture”
“The attempted professionalization of serious and systematic thinking has had a disastrous effect upon our culture”
Alasdair MacIntyre
“The attempted professionalization of serious and systematic thinking has had a disastrous effect upon our culture”
Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?“The introduction of the word ‘intuition’ by a moral philosopher is always a signal that something has gone badly wrong with an argument.”
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory“Whenever those immersed in the bureaucratic culture of the age try to think their way through to the moral foundations of what they are and what they do, they will discover suppressed Nietzschean premises. And consequently it is possible to predict with confidence that in the apparently quite unlikely contexts of bureaucratically managed modern societies there will periodically emerge social movements informed by just that kind of prophetic irrationalism of which Nietzsche's thought is the ancestor. Indeed just because and insofar as contemporary Marxism is Weberian in substance we can expect prophetic irrationalisms of the left as well as of the Right.”
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory“At the foundation of moral thinking lie beliefs in statements the truth of which no further reason can be given.”
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory“All power tends to coopt, and absolute power coopts absolutely.”
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory“Imprisoning philosophy within the professionalizations and specializations of an institutionalized curriculum, after the manner of our contemporary European and North American culture, is arguably a good deal more effective in neutralizing its effects than either religious censorship or political terror”
Alasdair MacIntyre, Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue, 1913-1922“I can be said truly to know who and what I am only because there are others who can be said truly to know who and what I am.”
Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues“To call the Form [of the Good] eternal is misleading: that something lasts forever does not render it any the better, any more than long-enduring whiteness is whiter than ephemeral whiteness.”
Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History Of Ethics: A History Of Moral Philosophy From The Homeric Age To The Twentieth Century“Plato in both the Gorgias and the Republic looked back to Socrates and asserted that "it is better to suffer tortures on the rack than to have a soul burdened with the guilt of doing evil." Aristotle does not confront this position directly: he merely emphasizes that it is better still both to be free from having done evil and to be free from being tortured on the rack.”
Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History Of Ethics: A History Of Moral Philosophy From The Homeric Age To The Twentieth Century“History is neither a prison nor a museum, nor is it a set of materials for self-congratulation.”
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