Episode 244 - Transcript

So I want you to imagine a world… where some kind of MAJOR crisis goes DOWN in the sciences…where then after it happens… people no longer believed in the scientific method anymore, as a reliable way of arriving at knowledge about the world. 

In other words imagine in this world people no longer believe that it’s VALID, for scientists to GO out into the field, RUN their experiments…imagine ALL of that stuff is just not TRUSTED anymore…but that at a CULTURAL level…people STILL go on and USE all kinds of scientific terminology, as a way to describe all the things around them. 

Imagine people still use terms like gravity in everyday discussion…they may talk about the nucleus of something in a conversation…they may talk about the INERTIA of their career…but imagine they USE these scientific TERMS… without the foundation that made SENSE of these things in the first place. 

Well, eventually what you might see there…are people that have their OWN DEFINITIONS… of what gravity is… or what gravity means to THEM. You know, this is MY truth, when it comes to gravity, they might say. 

Atoms to ME…just behave DIFFERENTLY than atoms do to you.

The WHOLE PICTURE of this may seem kind of ridiculous at first…but to the guy we’re talking about today Alasdair Macintyre…this is a metaphor he uses at the beginning of his book After Virtue…to explain what he thinks is ACTUALLY going on…when it comes to the CONFUSION we often run INTO…in our modern conversations about morality.

To put it simply… he thinks we live today in something like a hellscape of Emotivism. In a world where conversations about morality are rarely productive…NEVER satisfying…where if we EVER want to live in a world again where we can HAVE conversations about morality without constantly talking PAST each other…then we have to understand the history of moral thought that GOT us into this spot, and the important piece that was REMOVED, MANY years ago…that made these conversations productive.

And he spends the FIRST part of this book… doing just that. It becomes a genealogy of the HISTORY of moral thought. Out of respect to your time I’m just gonna get right into it, so we have plenty of time to get to the arguments he makes AFTER he lays this out. 

See, you go back far enough into history he says…and eventually you’ll run into a way that people used to talk about morality…that was centered around storytelling…and the ROLES that people used to PLAY in their society. 

He’s talking SPECIFICALLY about the period of time surrounding stories like the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer…BOUT the 6th century BC give or take…where to call someone a virtuous person back then…was the same thing as saying that they’re doing well, at some ROLE that they play in the world. 

To be virtuous in this world… is to be a good warrior, or a good king or a good friend. And it’s in STORIES from around this time LIKE the Illiad…that the PICTURE…of the good VERSIONS of these roles in society…were put on DISPLAY for people to be able to emulate. 

His POINT, that he’d want to underscore starting OUT here is that AT this time…as far as we know: there’s no elaborate, theoretical ARGUMENT, about morality that’s going on like there would be later. There’s just the relatively simple moral concepts of honor and SHAME…and then there’s a model of excellence that’s laid out in stories, that a GOOD person is likely to follow because they feel a sense of obligation. 

He thinks that’s an important DIFFERENCE… that we should keep in mind that will help bring context to our MODERN day. 

But anyway this way of doing morality only went on for a while…because as the years went on he says…it starts to become obvious, that this whole way of approaching it…has some very serious holes in it. 

This becomes more evident to people in PART he says… because there are great works of art over the years that SHOW these limitations. 

The tragedies of ancient Greece, for example, written by people we’ve talked about RECENTLY on the show. People like Sophecles, Aeschylus, Euripides…and it’s THROUGH their work Macintyre says that we start to consider more of the moral COMPLEXITY of what a human life often IS.

See, turns out… someone ISN’T just a WARRIOR, and then THAT’S IT… so now I can spend every second of my day just being a warrior, carry around a shield to the grocery store…you know EATING really aggressively like a WARRIOR does. 

No, life is more COMPLICATED than this. You’re not JUST a warrior…a person usually occupies MANY different roles in their life…and in each of these roles, a totally different behavior might be REQUIRED of you to be able to do it well. 

It takes a lot more compassion for example, to help care for your sick grandma…than it does to be able to storm a battlefield. Battlefield’s obviously gonna require a lot more COURAGE from you than compassion. And the point is while BOTH of these virtues are totally valid by themselves…having to live by BOTH of them simultaneously, can definitely cause some inner CONFLICT as someone’s living their life. 

No doubt something most people can RELATE to in the modern world: how do we compartmentalize ALL the different virtues that are REQUIRED of us in all the different settings we have to be in.

So Macintyre thinks these Greek tragedies if they did ANYTHING well…by featuring characters who need to make incredibly difficult CHOICES between different roles they play, when these characters OFTEN, have to make decisions where EVERY choice they have is suboptimal despite them having done nothing wrong…for Macintyre this does TWO things, ONE: it puts on DISPLAY… the moral ambiguity of what a life is truly LIKE… and TWO, it draws to the surface a pretty significant question people face in any serious moral conversation.

How is ANYONE… supposed to differentiate between WHICH of these roles takes priority over any other? 

And it’s this CLASS of question…that Macintyre thinks Plato’s work on morality, which comes shortly AFTER this…can ultimately be seen as a REACTION to. 

See, Plato REACTS to this tension by presenting the idea in his work…that there is a universal GOOD, that all these virtues stem from… a higher FORM of the good, FROM which everything we consider to be a virtue, is SUBORDINATE to.

And when he DOES this…well it turns out to be a MASSIVELY helpful concept when it comes to ORDERING how we should be making moral choices. 

All of a sudden: I don’t gotta sit around anymore agonizing over which virtue “wins or loses” in the abstract. 

No, for Plato the conversation becomes a bit more simple: virtues…are ALL different INDIVIDUAL expressions of the Good. 

So in THAT world the key question when it comes to choosing what I’m gonna do next: is what can I DO in this moment…that helps bring ORDER to my life…to where there’s more of an ALIGNMENT of my life with the Good. 

Macintyre thinks when it comes to having productive moral conversations between people over the ages…this move by Plato consolidates the whole thing in a way that’s really HELPFUL. It brings us to a more mature place than the earlier forms of virtue ethics. 

But it’s the NEXT thing that happens after this for Macintyre…that he thinks is NOT only just helpful like this…it’s one of the most IMPORTANT breakthroughs in the history of moral philosophy. And it goes on in the work of a STUDENT of Plato’s named Aristotle…and his introduction of the concept of “teleologies”, when it comes to how we talk about morality. 

See, as you MAY already know from the work we’ve DONE around Aristotle…to put it simply: he thought that MANY things in the universe… ESPECIALLY when it comes to biological life…have an END or a PURPOSE… that their existence should be aiming for. 

He bases this partly on the logic that there’s always a function to the things we CREATE as people, like a knife, for example. Where a good knife…you might say is a knife that cuts well. In other words a good knife is one that performs the FUNCTION that a knife is designed to perform. 

And under this logic you can imagine there’s a lot of BAD knives out there. Lotta mangled, broken, freaky lookin knives out there. But for Aristotle what MAKES any one of those knives bad… is that it doesn’t DO what a knife is designed to DO. 

And this goes for all sorts of OTHER things you can imagine. A good violin is one that can actually PLAY well. A good PEN is one that can actually WRITE. 

And again this EXTENDS for Aristotle to things that exist in the realm of biology too. A good EYE for example…you might say is one that SEES well. A good hand, is one that performs the functions of a HAND well, and you can probably see where all this is going. 

There is a function, and an EXCELLENCE…that is tied to what it is to be a human BEING, for Aristotle. With of course, CLEARLY, MANY MANY WRONG ways we could be living that are mostly just gonna be toxic to yourself and everything else around you.

Now for us to accept this whole view from him…it REQUIRES, at least SOME kind of a belief in human nature. It requires you to believe that there is some END, or a “teleology”, that is just the CORRECT WAY, for the KIND of creature a human being is…to EXIST in the kind of UNIVERSE we LIVE in. 

But to be clear, this DOESN’T have to be something that’s laying out an entire plan for your life…just as a BASIC EXAMPLE of this: you could say, to be a human being…is to be a creature with a finite capacity for dealing with stress, right. And, the universe is the kind of place… that periodically will throw things your WAY…that are completely overwhelming to you. And when those moments come up: FEAR is a common RESPONSE people have to that situation, sometimes at a level that’s debilitating. 

Now the argument from Aristotle is: IF you’re GOING to continue to FUNCTION WELL, as a human being on this planet…COURAGE, is almost CERTAINLY going to be a VIRTUE, that a person NEEDS to keep GOING.

So CULTIVATING courage, BECOMES a virtue that is not just SUBJECTIVELY good in the eyes of Aristotle…it is just GOOD, to BE a courageous human being, at a level that’s ALMOST something that starts to resemble a moral FACT. At a level you can almost DERIVE from just LOOKING at the nature of things around you. 

I mean he doesn’t talk about moral facts, EXPLICITLY in that way, but this IS the sentiment behind the virtues and their potential VALUE to people. It’s not an OPINION that virtues are going open up avenues to living the good life…something like being courageous…just IS going to EQUIP a person, to live BETTER in this world. 

Now real quick just to clarify Aristotle: he had all SORTS of things he thought fell into this general category. 

He thought we were rational, political animals that are part of communities…that we should live our lives building character and practical wisdom, FRIENDSHIP, among other things. There’s certainly a picture, HE paints of the GOOD life. 

But just know for the sake of the rest of this episode… you don’t need to believe in this exact picture of the good life to get value from the point being made by Macintyre in this book. 

The POINT from Macintyre…lies in Aristotle’s concept of a moral “teleology” that he just used there. He’d say WHEN there is an END that we can agree on about where a human life is headed…when there is some mutual understanding of FLOURISHING that we can assign to a human life…that teleology…1. ALLOWS for people to have moral discussions that are intelligible. And 2. Allows us to talk about things like VIRTUES…as a direct BRIDGE for someone to use to go from where they are now…to a life MORE in alignment with that human flourishing. Put a slightly different way the virtues become a bridge for a person to go from as they ARE…to a person as they COULD be. 

And just as a bit of foreshadowing here for whatever its worth…consider how this sounds as a direct CONTRAST…to David Hume’s is/ought distinction which we’ll talk about here in a bit. Consider how the virtues ALLOW us to go from mere descriptions of what we ARE…to what we SHOULD be doing. Just a heads up.

See because the story continues until a big change happens during the Enlightenment. Ancient Athens comes and goes…the classical world turns into a world where Christianity is the dominant moral framework in Europe. Later on, Islam becomes a dominant moral force as well. And this teleological theory from Aristotle becomes something that in BOTH of those cases…gets argued for over the years, then it gets translated, and it eventually gets WOVEN IN to these more RELIGIOUS forms of ethics as a norm of moral conversation. 

In other words over all these years teleology REMAINS a core piece of how we have our moral discussions… even WITHIN religious frameworks…and Macintyre says this goes on all the way until the Enlightenment comes along…when as MANY of you know, for very well intentioned REASONS…the goal becomes to REMOVE, all these pre-defined purposes that we used to assume about things…and the philosophers of this period are going to try to REBUILD the way we see morality… STARTING from zero. The question is: can morality be based… on a purely SECULAR sort of foundation, and still be reliable as a guide for human behavior.

Now, the PROBLEM with that whole plan for Alasdair Macintyre…is that it was DOOMED to fail from the start.

See much like the SCIENCE example that we began the episode with…what ends up happening…is that these Enlightenment thinkers, throw OUT any kind of teleology where we can talk about what a “good” human life is…but then they CONTINUE using the SAME moral TERMS…that were ONLY developed in a SETTING…where we HAD an adequate foundation to ground the concepts. 

What the enlightenment thinkers end up producing is what Alaisdair Macintyre calls a “simulacra of morality”. They keep USING terms like “good” and “justice” and “virtue”...but they cut OUT the moral tradition that through hundreds of years of INTENSE rational deliberation GAVE RISE to these concepts in the FIRST place. 

And it should be said: it’s CERTAINLY not for lack of EFFORT by the thinkers in the Enlightenment. 

I mean there are SO many attempts over the years to REGROUND morality in something that doesn’t ASSUME an end…Macintyre just thinks in every, single one of these cases…the philosopher either FAILS ENTIRELY, or smuggles in premises that end up doing EFFECTIVELY what teleologies used to do, but then they CLAIM that they arrived at it from a kind of “view from nowhere”. 

Kant, for example, tries to ground morality in pure practical reason… trying his HARDEST to not bring in any prior assumptions that aren’t necessary. Where a moral rule is valid…because any rational person would have to will that rule, regardless of whatever their individual desires may be. 

But MacIntyre thinks that once you’ve thrown out any shared picture of what human beings are actually for… then Kant’s method can’t actually CREATE, any moral answers for us…that is without smuggling in assumptions from these OLDER moral traditions, that part of the WHOLE POINT of his work was to leave behind. This is of course a common CRITIQUE of Immanuel Kant. 

There’s the UTILITARIAN attempt at doing this same thing… where people like Bentham and Mill try to REBUILD morality…on top of maximizing happiness, and minimizing suffering. Sounds good on the surface.

Well MacIntyre’s problem with THIS one…is that “happiness”, like this, can’t ever actually function as a SINGLE standard that settles conflicts between different ideas of the good. Meaning in PRACTICE…you’re always just LEFT with questions like: career success, or time with your family? Which one of those two wins out and why? Free speech or emotional safety for people? Which one do we CHOOSE there? To Macintyre, under utilitarian logic we HAVE no common way to rationally choose which of these to go with… so once again the theory ends up failing.

ANOTHER attempt at this during the Enlightenment he thinks…is the whole sentiment or desire route to morality that people tried…where the whole project is to try to ground morality in whatever human beings approve of or sympathize with. As you can guess: same PROBLEM though to Macintyre…without a teleology that we can rely on… this just reduces moral authority to whichever SENTIMENTS in people end up dominating the conversation. 

And the point with ALL of these is that when nothing is grounded in a shared conception of the good…moral discussions become what he calls incommensurable. We’re left with a pluralistic world…which may not sound so bad…but it’s a world where the best we’ll ever have when it comes to productive moral conversations… is the dream that maybe we’ll figure out how to do it some day. We certainly haven’t worked out how to do it YET…it’s a problem we’re trying to figure out.

But we WON’T ever figure it out, if we keep approaching morality in the same way. Macintyre thinks the is/ought distinction from David Hume, represents the ultimate expression of the FAILURE of the Enlightenment approach to morality. 

He actually has a lot of RESPECT for Hume. At least HE’S SAYING it like it IS. Not to mention he thinks at times Hume actually DOES derive an ought from an is. 

Point is: when your whole logic relies on the fact that there are no ends that we can draw from to determine which action is better or worse than any other…then… yes, you CAN’T derive an ought from an is. So scientific DESCRIPTION of reality becomes something you’re really GOOD at…but you’ll always lack the proper foundation to have moral conversations that are satisfying. 

And what you’re LEFT with he thinks after ALL this is left to play OUT…is a world built around Emotivism. 

Emotivism is a meta-ethical position we’ve talked about before on this podcast. And real quick just a reminder because I know nobody here is walking external hard drive with perfect memory: Emotivism…ISN’T a theory about morality…it’s really a theory about how we TALK about morality. It’s meta-ethical, not ethical.

See an emotivist in MORAL terms is what’s called a moral anti-realist. Meaning they believe that the categories of good and evil don’t actually exist at all. And if good and evil aren’t things that really exist…if these are just inventions by people after the fact…then the first question someone has to answer who holds that position is what are we ACTUALLY DOING then…when we SEEM to be having all these elaborate arguments about which things are good or evil? 

This is why Emotivism…is best described as a theory of how we TALK about morality. An Emotivist believes that whenever somebody says a moral claim like murder is wrong…although this may SOUND on the SURFACE like it’s describing some piece of reality…the more accurate way to read it is that there’s no, truth content, BEHIND a moral statement whatsoever. Saying murder is wrong…is the equivalent of someone saying “boo, murder!” Saying charity is good is the equivalent of someone saying “yay, charity!”. 

In other words They’re not really SAYING anything, other than an emotive expression, so there’s nothing really to critique in terms of truth. Moral discourse then becomes something that is NOT unlike, a crowd in a sports stadium…where opposite sides cheer for their respective teams…they give more of a free pass to people wearing THEIR team’s jersey, and are more critical of people wearing ANOTHER teams jersey.

And for Alasdair Macintyre…this becomes not ONLY a perfect description of the sort of world we live in today…but also the PINNACLE of what moral discourse can EVER be…given the poverty of our situation since teleologies have been removed. 

When people realize how POINTLESS it feels today to try to discuss morality with people who disagree with them…conversations start to take on a whole different form, where they become much MORE about persuasion, or coercion… sometimes people will try to downright FORCE others to think the way that THEY do. And the thinking is this should be EXPECTED to occur in an emotivist culture…cause this is really all that people have LEFT.

He gives a great example in the book of two thinkers that ultimately end up talking PAST each other in this way. Done episodes on BOTH of them…he’s talking about John Rawls, and Robert Nozick, two highly influential philosophers who did their work in the 20th century.

Now even if you don’t remember the specifics about either of these two…the point from Macintyre is that they both represent a very Enlightenment era, broken method, of trying to HAVE a moral conversation…and their disagreement here can reveal to us the entire set of assumptions…that leaves us as a culture, utterly incapable of RESOLVING real DISPUTES between each other…after teleologies have been thrown out.

He uses each of their views on property rights as a way of illustrating this.

See Robert Nozick would say…that property rights are about ensuring justice at the level of acquisition and entitlement. Put a bit more simply: if your grandpa dies, and he leaves you a bunch of houses that were part of his real estate empire he built back in the eighties doing a buncha stuff nobody likes to talk about…well you are ENTITLED to those HOUSES at a basic level. It’s your RIGHT to OWN them…because they were GIVEN to you. 

Nozick might ask what’s confusing about that… and why would it be anyone else’s business anyway?

As you can imagine this places Nozicks thought squarely in the realm of ensuring justice through the RIGHTS we have as people. He’d say RIGHTS are very IMPORTANT, and you have a RIGHT to the acquisition of property.

But it should be said: John Rawls would ALSO say rights are very important…and yet he’d disagree with almost everything Nozick just said entirely. 

For John Rawls…people’s PROPERTY rights…include not being born into a world where property is so consolidated into the hands of people that have already existed…that new people coming along find it next to impossible to participate in property markets that work for the people. 

People have a RIGHT, in other words to justice in terms of distribution based on the needs of actual people. He’d say you can’t buy up a ton of houses, sit on them doing nothing, and then watch as other people scramble and overpay for the few that are left to choose from. 

Now Macintyre’s point here: is that BOTH of these arguments are coherent, internally. It’s not like ONE of these is totally right and the other one’s nonsense. Both of them you could say point to a totally legitimate modern argument for providing JUSTICE to people. 

But the bigger question is how do we, ADJUDICATE, key word there… BETWEEN these two different ideas of justice? How do we rationally decide which one is REALLY more in line with Justice?

Well if we REMOVE teleologies, or ends that we’re aiming for…then using an Enlightenment style method like this makes answering that question impossible. 

These two will NEVER be able to convince each other of much of anything…and this is supported by the history that they never did…and McIntyre predicts these two will just keep arguing past each other, never able to make any progress, because they have no common END, that they can use the tool of rationality, to try to get CLOSER to.

And this is ESPECIALLY the case with THESE Two… 

I mean Rawls and his veil of ignorance… Nozick and his focus on human rights…to Macintyre it’s obvious BOTH of these guys are still HEAVILY situated in that broken, Enlightenment era kind of moral logic. 

They’re both still trying to GROUND terms like justice and rights…on a “view from nowhere”....that DOESN’T exist…and without the proper foundations that gave RISE to those terms in the first place. 

Again, to call back to the example at the beginning of the podcast…these are people that are trying to argue about their different definitions of gravity…but they’re trying to HAVE the conversation without referencing science, at all. 

And if we extend this from dry, academic philosophy to just conversations you have with the people around you…you can do this EXACT same thing with the abortion debate. You can do this with drug policy. This is the REASON our moral conversations feel so unsatisfying…and it’s ALSO why so much has CHANGED about the TACTICS people use when they talk about morality.

Because WHEN we live in this kind of POVERTY towards moral conversations…how do people react? How does the world change…how do things become DIFFERENT…in RESPONSE to things being so dissatisfying?

Well for Macintyre: certain, common, CHARACTERS you can SEE out there in the world…start to emerge and take ON more influential ROLES, in the world. When emotivist culture becomes MUCH more about persuasion, coercion and manipulation…then what we see is a massive INCREASE…in the power levels of managers, therapists and protestors, among other things. These are just three interesting ones Macintyre lays out that I’ll talk about right now. 

So first of all, why would this situation lead to an influx in the power of managers? Why does that make any sense. 

Well think of a manager and what their role is at a FACTORY for example. For the sake of argument imagine this is a factory that makes fishing poles and ships em out for people to buy.

Well as a makeshift LEADER of that whole operation that’s going on…nobody in their right mind EVER expects their manager to be someone that’s gonna offer moral GUIDANCE to people. 

Actually, in a way…if a manager ever TRIED to do that…very possible it gets in the way of what their ACTUAL job is…which in THIS case is CLEARLY…to facilitate the making and shipping of FISHING poles, and that’s IT. 

That’s the REAL TASK everybody’s there at the factory to do. So a manager turns into someone that becomes a MASTER…of the language that KEEPS everybody operating towards that task. 

Think of the kind of things they say: look, I’m not here to JUDGE. I’m not here to take SIDES or to shame anyone…I’m just trying to get us back to making fishing poles people can we JUST do THAT. 

Now that sounds very PEACE keeping and WONDERFUL on the SURFACE…but Macintyre would say think of what’s just BENEATH the surface there…ALL that is IMPLIED, by this whole POSTURE that a manager gets to take.

First of all they never talk for a SECOND about what the factory is FOR…how the GOALS of the factory interact with the rest of the world…whether the whole operation they’re a part of is worth pursuing…ALL of that is taken for GRANTED if you’re someone that wants to work there…in fact ANY kind of moral conversation in this area seems a bit beyond discussion for a workplace. 

Secondly…the manager’s role becomes EFFECTIVELY…to be a kind of bureaucratic EXPERT…whose job is to USE their management skill…to keep people as value-neutral as possible, and WORKING with some kind of value-neutral set of procedures everyday…that ultimately produces more FISHING poles. 

So think about it: that WHOLE SKILL…of being able to take a conflict about what matters… and translate it into a ‘just-do-your-job’ kind of technical problem…that becomes super valuable in a world where nobody can rationally settle what the ends “should” be about. 

And to Macintyre: to be able to use incentives like this, to be good at using CAREFULLY chosen language just to get consistent, daily compliance out of people…this is the ART of manipulation… that makes managers so much more valuable in an emotivist culture like ours. 

How bout another example though of a character that emerges in this kind of a world…the therapist. For Macintyre: similar product’s being provided by the therapist…it just goes on more one on one at the level of someone’s PERSONAL life. See the therapist ALSO…doesn’t really talk about ENDS too much…it’s the CLIENT’S job to decide what the right way to live is. They’ll say things like look I’m not here to tell you what a GOOD life is…I’m just here to help you get what you want out of life. 

In other words THEIR job…is not to talk about ENDS…its to talk about the MEANS by which a client can GET to wherever they want to go. So the content of the sessions becomes MOSTLY about self-management and coping strategies…instead of questioning whether the client’s entire idea of a good life in the first place is something that’s worth pursuing. 

Again, none of this is to hate on therapists and the service they provide…it’s just to say there’s this ENTIRE, MORAL conversation about a life well lived that’s gone on at all these other points in history…and we live in a world to Macintyre where it gets completely sidestepped in favor of this conversation about techniques that claim to be value neutral. And the therapist becomes more of a hot commodity in that kind of world. 

If the manager is translating moral conflicts into language about efficiency and processes at the workplace…then the therapist translates moral conflicts we have inside, into something we just MANAGE and ADJUST. Where fundamental issues at the base of a person’s entire approach to life…get thought of as a kind of individual malaise, that needs to be solved somehow by MASTERING it.

But there’s even MORE that changes when reasons can no longer settle moral conversations. Turns out putting PRESSURE on people… becomes a FAR more commonly used technique by people when they want to change the things around them. And this cues up for Macintyre the rise of the protester…as yet ANOTHER reaction to the emotivist culture we’re living in.

Little different than the therapist or the manager because no protester marches around pretending to be value neutral about things. 

But again, in an environment where trying to persuade people feels almost useless…what else do people HAVE if they truly want to change things? Well, in THIS case: ALL the tools people use during public protest. They got condemnation as a tool, they can force visibility and get their cause out there, they got their glittery, bedazzled SIGNS they made from the hobby section at Michaels. 

Remember: from an emotivist perspective…a crowd of people saying murder is wrong…is very similar to a crowd of people just going BOO murder BOO! 

So under that kind of logic to Macintyre, PROTEST…becomes just a strong, public mobilization, of a PARTICULAR moral position. And if whoever WINS a moral argument is just who can get more people on their side of the line saying BOO or YAY to whatever they believe in…then PROTEST becomes a pretty effective way to put pressure on people to take a side. Again this is why protesting feels so much more gratifying…than having pointless moral conversations in a post-teleology world. 

Anyway so maybe you HEAR all this…and you’re wondering where Macintyre could POSSIBLY be going with it. I mean let’s say he’s right: we removed the teleologies we used to assume were embedded into things…and now we live in a world where we can’t agree on which ENDS we should be aiming for. 

But what exactly are we supposed to DO, you might ask. Cause fact is: look Macintyre people don’t BELIEVE in these teleologies anymore. What, are we supposed to go back to a time where we think like Aristotle? How exactly do you plan on brainwashing people into believing in this kind of stuff again? And before you answer: Guantanamo Bay’s already booked SOLID for the next 10 years or so.

Well the good news is Macintyre does NOT think…we should be going back to the teleologies of the time of Aristotle. But he DOES think…there are teleologies, or at least things that FUNCTION, JUST LIKE teleologies, ALL AROUND US, that are NOT being utilized as much as they COULD be. In other words: maybe its possible to RECREATE what teleologies used to DO for us…using NOTHING things in the modern lives we’re already living. 

See to bring this back to the genealogy he did for a second…we’ve already TALKED about SEVERAL ways that virtues have been used by people at different points in history. In the time of Homer they were used to guide people on how to fill a ROLE in society better. In Christendom they were used as a way to align someone’s life closer to God. And to Macintyre: THIS is REALLY what we’re going to need to recreate for our MODERN times if we want to be able to have these more productive moral conversations– not ONLY ENDS that we’re aiming for, but ALSO a way that we can then use VIRTUES, as SPECIFIC behaviors that can get us CLOSER to those ends. 

We need to TURN the virtues BACK into things that can take someone from who they are…to who they COULD be. Like they’ve FUNCTIONED throughout history.

So how do we DO that? What is something in the modern world that has teleology BUILT INTO it…but doesn’t require a BELIEF in anything Aristotle used to believe 2000 years ago. 

The ANSWER, for Macintyre, are shared practices, that have internal goods of their own…existing closely alongside the communities and moral traditions, that KEEP those shared practices alive. 

This is going to take FAR MORE than the time I have left in this episode to cover all of it…and I’m just hoping there will many of you out there that are AS interested as I am in Alasdair Macintyre’s solution to all this. But this book After Virtue we’ve been talking about today is really the DIAGNOSIS of the problem he gives. He spends QUITE a bit of time in later work talking about what we can DO about it, and that’s what I want to talk about in the near future if that sounds interesting. If you get a sec in the comments let me know if that’s okay as a short term path forward. Anyway…wanna talk today AT LEAST about shared PRACTICES, as a modern version of a way he thinks the virtues can function again.

So to think along the lines of teleologies…it doesn’t require there being some big metaphysical picture connected to them, where there’s a fixed way to be human being embedded into the cosmos. 

And an example that doesn’t require all that to Macintyre…are ALL the activities we do together as people…that AS a collective activity…HAVE as a PART of them standards and ends that we’re all aiming for as we DO them. 

There are THOUSANDS of examples of this kind of activity you could give. FARMING is an example he gives in the book. Let’s take a quick look at it. 

Now he’s VERY CAREFUL here to not confuse anyone…he doesn’t want anyone to mistake farming as a PRACTICE…from just the verb of planting seeds in the ground and putting water on them. He has this great line where he says “planting turnips is not a practice; farming is.” 

Meaning, there’s something called farming, that is a complex, cooperative activity with all kinds of learned standards for the people participating in it. You gotta know the SOIL. You gotta understand how it changes in the seasons, how to plan rotations, you gotta care for animals, you gotta maintain your equipment, you gotta store and distribute the stuff you GROW properly, I could keep going…but I’ve been told by my kids lately to stop talking so much. I’m working on it. 

The point is: Farming…is a shared practice between people…with things that are internally GOOD to being able to do it well. And there’s a lot of BAD ways you could be farming, just like there’s a lot of bad knives. And contrary to that there’s just forms of know-how and judgment WITHIN the practice…that you only get by actually participating in farming well. 

More than that… if you DO participate in farming well…maybe you INNOVATE WITHIN the practice, and come up with something NEW…in other words: your excellence as a farmer, has a chance of raising the bar for ALL the OTHER farmers that are part of the shared practice along with you.

Now if we were looking for a domain in the modern world that has ends built into it that we can rationally, adjudicate better or worse behaviors…shared practices like farming, are going to be a really important place to start looking if you’re Macintyre. 

And because there ARE BEHAVIORS that we can identify…where it’s not just a subjective OPINION that they make you a better farmer…no, these are VIRTUES that you can live by that WILL JUST MAKE YOU BETTER at the shared practice of farming…well, comparable to other points in history these virtues once again become things people can not only model pieces of their lives after, but then they can discuss better and worse ways of doing things, in ways that ARE actually satisfying and productive. 

And farming is just ONE example here. This could be medicine. It could be Architecture. Team SPORTS is another one he uses in the book, certainly ways to adjudicate better and worse levels of that. But an important detail to keep in mind here is that if we’re going to be calling behaviors that make us better at these things, “virtues”...then Macintyre thinks we need to make sure they’re pointing to behaviors that aren’t just seeking external rewards for doing the thing. 

For example, he talks in the book about how Chess could be seen as ANOTHER one of these shared practices. And he says that you can teach a kid to play better chess…by saying that you’ll give them a piece of candy every time they practice their chess tactics. And that KID…might end up getting a better and better understanding of chess, motivated by nothing else but the candy every day. 

But FOR us to be able to call that kids behavior in line with virtue, the way MACINTYRE’S talking about it…they would HAVE to be doing things that LEAD to better outcomes, INTERNAL to the practice itself. 

So in the case of Chess, maybe you could say a virtue is patience, because it helps you evaluate a position and get better at calculating what the right move is. Maybe a virtue would be honesty, because if you cheat and use an engine to find the right move, then you’re not getting any better at the game. Maybe a virtue would be humility, because if you can’t admit you played a bad move—or learn from someone better than you…then you’ll never actually end up improving.

You can SEE how just doing it for CANDY…or for money or fame or ANYTHING for that matter…misses something IMPORTANT for Macintyre, about what MAKES something a virtue that helps bring about a teleological end. There are certain virtues, INTERNAL to ANY PRACTICE…that when they’re stuck to, will unlock the internal goods of that practice in a way that is NOT just subjective preference. NOT moral opinion.

So at the risk of repeating myself here…you can see how shared practices for Macintyre…become a way that we can RE-ACCESS the concept of teleology and virtue…WITHOUT having to believe in some grand metaphysical picture that has an END that human life should be aiming for. 

But here’s something important he’d want us to remember: practices…don’t just survive all on their own. Things like farming and chess and medicine…these are ALL things he says that ultimately live inside of communities, of people. You ALWAYS need a community that has the ability to TEACH these virtues, CORRECT people when they start to fall off. Especially in our modern world: you NEED a community that PROTECTS the practice…from getting hollowed out and turned into something that people ONLY do for the sake of those external rewards, like the candy with the kid playing chess. ALL of this…ladders up into what Macintyre eventually calls a “moral tradition” that is PART of a community. 

So…Communities, which are MADE UP of different shared practices and the ongoing work being done to calibrate them across history…communities become a kind of “living argument” to Alasdair Macintyre. They become an embodiment of the moral tradition that’s necessary…to carry the practice of virtue, moving forward. 

At bottom… Macintyre thinks we’re left with a very important CHOICE, living in this modern, emotivist culture. When it comes to the FUTURE of our moral conversations, he asks how do we want them to look? He says it’s either gonna be Nietzsche…or it’s gonna be Aristotle. And his POINT here… is exactly where we’ll begin on the NEXT episode, should anyone out there tell me that they’re still interested in his follow up to all this. 

Patreon.com/philosophizethis. Gonna be doing a LOT of extra stuff on there in 2026. Keep your eyes open. And as always thank you for listening. Talk to you next time.