Piercey Robert: The Uses of the Past from Heidegger to Rorty: Doing Philosophy Historically
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constructing a distinctive type of narrative about it. Such a narrative shows
that a given schema makes more sense of its competitors than they do of it,
and that it is therefore preferable to them. We learn something crucial about
a schema – that it is the best one to have emerged so far – by telling the story
of how it has fared over time in relation to others. MacIntyre’s position here
is strikingly similar to my claim that doing philosophy historically involves
seeing what a picture can do by seeing what it has done – that is, learning
about a picture’s nature by constructing a narrative about its historical
development. Of course, MacIntyre’s account is not an exact fit with
mine. He does not, for example, use the term “philosophical picture.”
But the similarities are more striking than the differences.
In short, even before MacIntyre published the works for which he is best
known – After Virtue and its sequels – he expressed a good deal of sympathy
for the project of doing philosophy historically. His early work recognizes
that philosophical pictures play an indispensable role in our thinking. It also
recognizes that the most important way of learning about these pictures is to
trace their development in historical narratives. It does not, however, tell us
which pictures should interest us, or what we discover when we study them.
For that – and for the clearest example of MacIntyre’s use of the critical
approach to doing philosophy historically – we must turn to After Virtue.
criticism as repudiation:
after virtue
MacIntyre describes After Virtue as part of a “single project”
15
in which he
has been engaged since 1977. This project – to which Whose Justice? Which
Rationality? and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry are also central
16
–
consists in pointing out the fragmentary, incoherent character of contem-
porary moral life, and in developing an alternative to it. After Virtue is the
first stage of this project, and as Jean Porter says, it is “essentially a critical
book.”
17
Its main goal is to document the failings of contemporary moral
life. MacIntyre does not present a detailed alternative to contemporary
moral life until his later work. According to After Virtue, moral life today
is “an unharmonious mélange of ill-assorted fragments” (AV, 10). It is
marked by debates that are shrill and interminable – debates that not only
15
Alasdair MacIntyre, “An Interview with Giovanna Borradori,” in The MacIntyre Reader, ed. Kevin
Knight (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 269. In this passage, MacIntyre
suggests that his project might well be called “An Interminably Long History of Ethics.”
16
MacIntyre, “An Interview with Giovanna Borradori,” 269.
17
Jean Porter, “Tradition in the Recent Work of Alasdair MacIntyre,” in Alasdair MacIntyre, ed. Mark
Murphy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 39.
Criticism as repudiation: After Virtue 87
do not end, but cannot end, because there is no rational way of settling
them. Both the defenders and the critics of abortion rights, for example, can
construct compelling arguments for their positions.
18
Defenders of these
rights can point to the importance of respecting privacy and allowing people
to control their own bodies. Their critics can point to the need to protect
life, whether actual or potential. Most of us find ourselves drawn to both
sets of principles, and it is not at all clear how to choose between them. For
MacIntyre, this ambivalence is a general feature of contemporary moral life.
To be a moral agent today is to be torn between competing principles and to
lack any comprehensive framework in which they might be adjudicated.
According to MacIntyre, the reason for this fragmentation is that what we
call morality is just a remnant of something older and larger. In heroic societies,
as well as in ancient and medieval Europe, morality was recognized as essentially
teleological. These societies had a shared conception of the human good, an
understanding of what it is desirable for human beings to become. Moral
precepts were therefore seen as instruments – the principles that, when fol-
lowed, tended to help people achieve their good. In other words, moral norms
madesensebecauseoftheroletheyplayed in a larger teleological structure, a
structure in which they bridged human nature as it is and human nature as it
ought to be. In such a structure, there is “a threefold scheme in which human-
nature-as-it-happens-to-be (human nature in its untutored state) is initially
discrepant and disco rdant with the precepts of ethic s and needs to be trans-
formed … into human-nature-as-it-could-be-if-it-realized-its-telos” (AV, 53).
Since the scientific revolution, however, such sche mes have fallen out of
favor, because the kind of teleology that they presuppose has also fallen out
of favor. Ancient and medieval philosophers typically derive their conceptions
of the human telos from “some account of the essence of man as a rational
animal” (AV, 52). A good example is what MacIntyre calls the “metaphysical
biology” (AV, 162) of Aristotle. But such accounts of the human essence are
now considere d implausib le.
19
As a result, few people in the contemporary
world accept the idea of a shared good for human beings as such.
20
But without
18
The example of abortion is MacIntyre’s own: see AV, 6–7. MacIntyre also gives the examples of
debates about just war and private education.
19
It should be remembered that MacIntyre rejects this metaphysical biology as well (AV, 162). Interestingly,
MacIntyre’s recent work is less dismissiv e of metaphysical biology than is After Virtue. Dependent Rational
Animals, for instance, argues that some important ethical consequences follow from our animal nature,
and that philosophers – including himself – have paid insufficient attention to this fact. See Alasdair
MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals (Chicago: Open Court, 1999), 8.
20
Of course, MacIntyre’s hope is that the idea of a human telos can be separated from the metaphysical
biology on which it was originally based. To simplify dramatically, he will argue that a robust
conception of the human good can be derived from our social roles and practices.
88 The critical approach: MacIntyre
a good of this sort, MacIntyre argues, moral norms have no meaning or
purpose. They are like the ancient Polynesian taboos: rules that, because of
their history, exert a powerful grip on us, but whose origin and significance have
been forgotten. We find ourselves unable to abandon them, but we can give no
good reason to care about them.
This has not stopped philosophers from trying to find a reason. Sensing
that traditional justifications of morality no longer worked, philosophers of
the modern period set themselves the task of finding a purely rational basis
for it. They tried to show that any rational human being is obliged to act
morally. They tried to identify some feature of human nature as it is that,
when properly understood, would compel us to obey traditional moral
norms. Of course, modern philosophers have disagreed about what this
feature is. For Hume, it is the sentiments, and especially the sympathy we
happen to feel for creatures like ourselves. For Kant, it is reason’s ability to
legislate for itself – that is, its ability to give itself a law that is independent of
any particular desire, and to act out of respect for this law. For Kierkegaard,
it is a groundless and apparently arbitrary decision to live ethically rather
than aesthetically. These theories, and others like them, make up what
MacIntyre calls the enlightenment project. He defines this project as
the attempts to find a rational justification for morality in that historical period –
say from 1630 to 1850 – when it acquired a sense at once general and specific. In that
period “morality” became the name for that particular sphere in which rules of
conduct which are neither theological nor legal nor aesthetic are allowed a cultural
space of their own. (AV, 39)
In other words, the enlightenment project is the attempt to justify the
content of traditional Western morality without appealing to a shared
telos.
21
It is “the project of constructing valid arguments which will move
from premises concerning human nature as [we] understand it to be to
conclusions about the authority of moral rules” (AV, 52). The enlighten-
ment project tries to get by with only two parts of an essentially tripartite
structure. It tries to find a reason to act morally in human nature as it is,
without the mediation of a vision of human nature as it ought to be. But this
project, MacIntyre argues, cannot succeed. “Each of the three elements of
the scheme,” he claims, “requires reference to the other two if its status and
function are to be intelligible” (AV, 53). Accordingly, MacIntyre argues that
the enlightenment project not only did fail, but had to fail.
21
According to MacIntyre, one of the most striking facts about the practitioners of the enlightenment project
is their conservatism about the content of morality. By and large, they understand us to have the same
obligations that Christianity does. They simply seek a different basis for these obligations. See AV, 43–44.
Criticism as repudiation: After Virtue 89
This claim serves as the lens through which MacIntyre examines specific
examples of the enlightenment project. After Virtue tells a highly original
story about the philosophers who try to find a rational basis for morality
between 1630 and 1850. It depicts these philosophers as making up a
continuous and developing movement, one in which each philosopher
takes as his starting point the work of an immediate predecessor. More
specifically, each takes for granted that his predecessor’s attempt to justify
morality rationally has failed, and “the vindication of each position,”
MacIntyre claims, is “made to rest in crucial part upon [this] failure”
(AV, 49). The narrative begins with what MacIntyre considers the most
important recent view of the relation between ethics and reason: emotivism.
Emotivism is the view that moral propositions merely express the attitudes
of the person uttering them. “Murder is wrong,” on this view, is nothing but
an expression of my disapproval of murder, or perhaps a plea for you to
disapprove of it as well. Emotivism therefore “envisages moral debate in
terms of a confrontation between incompatible and incommensurable
premises and moral commitment as the expression of a criterionless choice
between such premises, a type of choice for which no rational justification
can be given” (AV, 39). Philosophers tend to think of emotivism exclusively
as a philosophical position, one associated with Anglo-American philosophy
of the mid twentieth century. Emotivism in this sense was short-lived: it
“did not prevail within analytical philosophy” (AV, 39), and most philoso-
phers have long recognized that the arguments usually advanced in defense
of it are terrible. MacIntyre argues, however, that the position continues to
exist in our wider culture. Our society instinctively sees moral debate as a
series of interminable squabbles between arbitrary, incompatible premises
that cannot be rationally justified. In other words, “what emotivism takes to
be universally the case” is “the case by and large about our own culture”
(AV, 19).
MacIntyre’s narrative portrays the emotivist self as the outcome of an
earlier stage in the history of moral philosophy. Moral agents, as emotivism
understands them, have “suffered a deprivation, a stripping-away of qual-
ities that were once believed to belong to the self” (AV, 33). These qualities
are aspects of what MacIntyre calls “human-nature-as-it-happens-to-be”
(AV, 53). They are qualities that earlier philosophers had hoped would
compel all rational agents to accept the traditional content of morality,
but that proved incapable of doing so. Which qualities are these? One
answer is offered by Kierkegaard, the figure who provides the most obvious
link between contemporary emotivist culture and the moral philosophy of
the classical modern period. Kierkegaard describes moral obligation as
90 The critical approach: MacIntyre
grounded in the human capacity for choice, and more specifically in our
capacity to choose the ethical way of life over the aesthetic. As Kierkegaard
makes clear in Either/Or, this choice is not itself a moral one. It is “not the
choice between good and evil, it is the choice whether or not to choose in
terms of good or evil” (AV, 40). It is also a criterionless choice.
22
“I can be
offered no reason for preferring one to the other” (AV, 40), since what
counts as a reason for the ethical standpoint will not count as one for the
aesthetic standpoint, and vice versa. In basing morality on a criterionless
choice, MacIntyre claims, Kierkegaard discovers the ultimate arbitrariness
of modern morality. For Kierkegaard, however, this is “a discovery of a
disconcerting, even shocking kind” ( AV, 39). For contemporary culture, it is
a commonplace.
But what leads Kierkegaard to ground morality in an arbitrary choice?
Quite simply, it is his conviction that none of the philosophers who
preceded him had succeeded in justifying morality in any other way. He
is particularly struck by what he sees as Kant’s failure to ground morality in
the structures of pure practical reason. Kant tries to ground morality in
reason’s autonomy – that is, its ability to have the will determined by a
moral law that it gives itself, rather than by empirical causes such as desires.
Ethics is therefore a matter of finding “a rational test which will discriminate
those maxims which are a genuine expression of the moral law when they
determine the will from those maxims which are not” (AV, 44). This test, of
course, is the categorical imperative, which Kant offers as a way of distin-
guishing autonomous and therefore permissible maxims from heterono-
mous and impermissible ones. But Kant’s test was widely considered
unsuccessful by later philosophers. The problem, as MacIntyre puts it, is
that “many immoral and trivial non-moral maxims are vindicated by Kant’s
test quite as convincingly – in some cases more convincingly – than the
moral maxims which Kant aspires to uphold” (AV, 45–46). “‘Keep all your
promises throughout your entire life except one,’” for instance, turns out to
pass the test of the categorical imperative, as does “‘Always eat mussels on
Mondays in March’” (AV, 46). The autonomy of reason proves unable to
justify morality. Thus “Kant’s failure provided Kierkegaard with his starting-
point: the act of choice had to be called in to do the work that reason could
no longer do” (AV, 47).
22
Many Kierkegaard scholars reject MacIntyre’s claim that the choice between the ethical and the aesthetic is
an arbitrary, non-rational one. See, for example, John Davenport, “The Meaning of Kierkegaard ’sChoice
Between the Aesthetic and the Ethical: A Response to MacIntyre,” in Kierkegaard After MacIntyre,ed.
John Davenport and Anthony Rudd (Chicago: Open Court, 2001), 75–112;andGordonMarino,“The
Place of Reason in Kierkegaard’sEthics,” in Kierkegaard After MacIntyre, 113–127.
Criticism as repudiation: After Virtue 91
Just as Kierkegaard’s work grows out of the shortcomings of Kant’s, Kant’s
work grows out of a still earlier failure: the failure of Diderot, Hume, and
other early enlightenment thinkers to derive morality from some empirically
observed feature of human nature. Their enterprise is a cruder version of
Kant’s. Whereas Kant tries to ground morality in a feature of the noumenal
self – its ability to give itself a universal law – Diderot and Hume try to
ground it in a feature of the phenomenal self. The feature they choose is our
affective states: desires, passions, and the like. Diderot argues that desire is the
ultimate source of our moral responsibilities. We obey the moral principles
recognized by society because we recognize that doing so will help us satisfy
our desires in the longrun. Hume’s strategy is similar, but more sophisticated.
He claims that it is the sentiments, and especially the sympathy we sponta-
neously feel for our fellow creatures, that lead us to accept the principles we
do. But this strategy of deriving moral principles from the passions is bound
to fail. After all, one of the most important functions of moral principles is to
adjudicate among our desires – that is, to determine which desires we should
and should not act on. Since desires must be judged by means of moral
principles, they “cannot themselves be derived from or justified by reference
to the desires among which they have to arbitrate” (AV, 48).
23
MacIntyre’s narrative about the enlightenment project is thus a story of
decline. Kierkegaard, Kant, Diderot, and Hume all failed to find a justifi-
cation for morality in “human-nature-as-it-happens-to-be” (AV, 53). The
implication is that no such justification can be found, and that we should
address the shortcomings of contemporary moral life in some other way.
But when MacIntyre criticizes the enlightenment project, what sort of thing
is he criticizing? His readers generally assume that his target is a philosoph-
ical theory – that the enlightenment project is a specific position one might
hold on a specific philosophical issue. On this view, when MacIntyre
criticizes the enlightenment project, he is criticizing a theory that
Kierkegaard, Kant, and Hume all share, a theory that has turned out to
be incorrect and that must be rejected. Accordingly, those who reject
MacIntyre’s conclusions about the enlightenment project typically look
for defects in his refutation of this alleged theory. They take him to task
for not having proven that a particular theory is incorrect. Some, such as
Alan Gewirth, respond to his claim that no rational justification of morality
23
MacIntyre points out that Hume’s own writings often condemn certain passions as “deviant,”
“absurd,” and “ criminal” (AV, 49). These writings therefore rest on “an implicit, unacknowledged
view of the state of passions in a normal and what we might call, but for Hume’s view of reason,
reasonable man” (AV, 48).
92 The critical approach: MacIntyre
is possible by giving new justifications of their own. They try to construct
new, sound arguments for the conclusion that all rational agents are obliged
to act morally in the sense understood by Kant, Hume, et al.
24
Others take
issue with MacIntyre’s historical scholarship, claiming he does not accu-
rately represent the theories held by the figures he discusses. Robert Wokler,
for example, criticizes MacIntyre for misrepresenting the Scottish enlight-
enment and for oversimplifying the views of the thinkers who participated
in it.
25
The thinkers of the enlightenment, Wokler maintains, are too
numerous and too diverse to have had any one project in common.
26
Clearly, Wokler’s criticism assumes that the enlightenment project criticized
by MacIntyre is a single philosophical theory or project. Similarly, John
Davenport and Gordon Marino take issue with MacIntyre’sexpositionof
Kierkegaard, arguing that Kierkegaard does not really see the choice to live
ethically as arbitrary and non-rational, as MacIntyre claims.
27
All of these
critics take MacIntyre to be attacking a specific theory supposedly held by a
number of historical figures. So they attack him in turn for saying incorrect
things about this theory.
But is MacInty re’s critique of the enlightenment project directed at a
philosophical theory in this sense? There are good reasons to think it is not.
The most obvious reason is that the project MacIntyre is discussing is exceed-
ingly general – as it would h ave to be, in order to be at tributed to Diderot ,
Hume, Kant, Kierkegaard, and the host of minor figures lumped in with them.
It seems unlikely that such a large and diverse group of thinkers could share any
theory specific enough to be of much philosophical interest. On the contrary,
the theories advanced by these p hilosophers often seem to respond to signifi-
cantly different questions. Kant, for example, thinks that the main task of ethics
is to find a test that will distinguish maxims that are genuine expressions of the
moral law from those that are not. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, understands
his task at a much higher level of generality. It is to determine what is involved
in accepting the institution of morality in the first place. This is not to say that
the theories of Kant and Kierkegaard have nothing in common. But the
similarities between them – at least the similari ties th at inte rest MacIntyre –
cannot be reduced to something as precise as a particular ethical theory.
24
See Alan Gewirth, “Rights and Virtues.” Review of Metaphysics 38:4 (1985), 739–762.
25
Robert Wokler, “Projecting the Enlightenment,” in After MacIntyre, ed. John Horton and Susan
Mendus (London: Polity, 1994), 108–126. Wokler calls MacIntyre’s discussion of the Scottish enlight-
enment “wonderfully confused, both in method and in substance, generally and in detail” (115).
26
Wokler, “Projecting the Enlightenment,” 115–116.
27
See Davenport, “The Meaning of Kierkegaard’s Choice,” 101; and Marino, “The Place of Reason in
Kierkegaard’s Ethics,” 116.
Criticism as repudiation: After Virtue 93
A second reason to doubt that the enlightenment project is a particular theory
can be found in MacIntyre’s descriptions of what he is doing in After Virtue.As
we have seen, MacIntyre argues that the failings of contemporary moral life can
be detected only through historical study. Neither conceptual analysis nor
phenomenological description can diagnose the crisis in contemporary morality
(AV, 2). History is the only tool available to us, which is why MacIntyre’s
critique of the enlightenment project takes the form of a historical narrative. But
After Virtue engages in a very specific type of history. The narrative it constructs
is not “academic history” (AV , 4) as it is usually practiced.
28
Rather, it is “what
Hegel called philosophical history and what Collingwood took all successful
historical writing to be” (AV, 3).
29
Philosophical history, as Hegel and
Collingwood understand it, does not merely seek to give an accurate chronicle
of past events. By extension, a philosophical history of ethics would not seek to
give accurate reconstructio ns of the theories held by Kant and Kierkegaard.
Rather, philosophical history engages in a “thoughtfu l consideration”
30
of the
past. For Hegel and Collingwood, this is a matter of uncovering the reason in
the past, of showing “that the history of the world … presents us with a rational
process.”
31
Uncovering this rational process is a difficult business, and involves
active, sometimes violent, interpretation. It is quite different from the work of
what Hegel calls “the ordinary, the ‘impartial’ historiographer, who believes and
professes that he maintains a simply receptive attitude, surrendering himself
onlytothedatasuppliedhim.”
32
To be sure, philosophical historians strive to
make their work consistent with the historical record, as it is documented by the
“ordinary,”“‘impartial’ historiographer.”
33
Butitisnottheirgoaltocontribute
to this record. Their goal is to do something more active.
34
28
MacIntyre notes several differences between his narrative and those of conventional academic history.
One of the most important is that academic history tries to adopt “a value-neutral standpoint” (AV,
4), while the type of history MacIntyre writes “is informed by standards. It is not an evaluatively
neutral chronicle” (AV, 3).
29
Though MacIntyre claims to be doing philosophical history in Hegel’s sense, he is also keen to
distance himself from certain aspects of Hegel’s work. He claims, for example, that his own
philosophical history “involves a form of fallibilism: it is a kind of historicism which excludes all
claims to absolute knowledge” (AV, 270). He also says that he is “irremediably anti-Hegelian in
rejecting the notion of an absolute standpoint, independent of the particularity of all traditions.” See
Alasdair MacIntyre, “A Partial Response to my Critics,” in After MacIntyre, 295.
30
Hegel, Philosophy of History, 8.
31
Hegel, Philosophy of History, 9.
32
Hegel, Philosophy of History, 9.
33
MacIntyre seems to consider it quite important that his narrative cohere with conventional scholarly
work in the history of philosophy. He says, for example, that he has “a good deal of sympathy” (AV,
271) for those who think that After Virtue oversimplifies Hume and Kant.
34
For a more detailed discussion of how the study of past thinkers inevitably involves active reinter-
pretation, see my “Active Mimesis and the Art of History of Philosophy.” International Philosophical
Quarterly 43:1 (2003), 29–42.
94 The critical approach: MacIntyre
Since After Virtue claims to be philosophical history in the mould of
Hegel and Collingwood, its aim cannot be to give an accurate chronicle of
the views of past thinkers. So the enlightenment project – the centerpiece
of the philosophical history MacIntyre constructs here – cannot be a specific
philosophical theory. Accordingly, MacIntyre need not be terribly con-
cerned about critics who point out ways in which he has failed to do justice
to the subtleties of the Scottish enlightenment, or Kierkegaard, or other
figures. He does not claim to be doing them justice. He claims that he is
uncovering the reason at work in a larger movement to which these figures
belong. In other words, he claims to be bringing to light a conceptual and
historical development in the period from 1630 to 1850, a development not
recognized by the philosophers in question, or by the conventional histor-
ians of philosophy who study this period.
35
One indication of this is that
MacIntyre’s narrative about the enlightenment project contains elements
one would not expect to find in conventional histories of philosophy. It
traces developments and lines of influence that would seem bizarre in more
traditional scholarship: emotivism growing out of Kierkegaard’s Either/Or?
Kierkegaard responding not to Hegel, but to difficulties in Kant’s theory of
autonomy? These are not the sorts of claims advanced in dispassionate
accounts of what Kant and Kierkegaard really thought. The developments
traced by MacIntyre’s narrative are conceptual developments visible only to
a philosophical historian – someone trying to determine what, from the
standpoint of reason, was the significance of certain developments in moral
philosophy from 1630 to 1850. MacIntyre is trying to make us see these
developments by fitting them into a distinctive type of narrative. He is
trying to trigger a shift in how we view classical modern philosophy, a shift
in what we see this period as. He is not trying to identify a specific theory
held by every modern moral philosopher.
If the enlightenment project is not a theory, then what is it? It is a picture –
a general conceptual framework common to a great many thinkers. The
enlightenment project is a way of approaching moral questions and under-
standing moral principles. It is based on the conviction that questions about
the justification of moral principles must be answered by appeals to “re ason”–
where “reason” is understood as the ability to discern present matters of fact.
Reason in this sense can see the features of human nature as it currently is,
but it is blind to teleological considerations. As is the case with other
35
Indeed, it could be argued that conventional historians of philosophy cannot recognize this develop-
ment, since they strive to understand past thinkers from “a value-neutral standpoint” (AV, 4). The
development MacIntyre describes cannot be seen from such a standpoint.
Criticism as repudiation: After Virtue 95
pictures, accepting the enlightenment project is a matter of having certain
dispositions. It is a resolve to address questions about ethical principles in a
distinctive way, and to generate ethical theories of a certain kind. And what
does MacIntyre learn about the enlightenment project by studying its
historical development? Recall the general description of doing philosophy
historically given in Chapter 1. There, I argued that one traces the develop-
ment of a picture in order to see what it can and cannot do. MacIntyre’s
engagement with the enlightenment project teaches him that those who
share this picture cannot do what they intend. They cannot explain why we
should accept traditional moral norms without making reference to teleo-
logical considerations. If MacIntyre is right, they should not even try, since
these norms require teleological considerations if their “status and function
are to be intelligible” (AV, 53). So MacIntyre engages with the enlighten-
ment project in order to show that we should reject it, since this picture sets
itself a goal that cannot be attained.
We should note that there are several possible explanations of what
“cannot” means here. After Virtue strongly suggests that trying to justify
moral norms without a view of the human telos is a conceptual impos-
sibility – that “just too much incoherence and inconsistency is involved in
[the enlightenment project] for any reasonable person to continue to hold
it” (AV, 267 ). MacIntyre claims, for example, that “any project of this
form was bound to fail, because of an ineradicable discrepancy between
their shared conceptions of moral rules and … their conception of human
nature” (AV, 52, my emphasis). MacIntyre’s later books, however, tend to
describe this failure somewhat differently. They suggest that the enlighten-
ment project is a live option – that it is coherent and consistent, and that it is
not simply irrational to subscribe to it – but that some other picture is
preferable.
36
That said, MacIntyre clearly thinks that the enlightenment has
an unattainable goal, regardless of why this goal is unattainable.
To this difficulty, we might add a second one: the enlightenment project
does not, and cannot, understand itself. Those who accept this picture take
themselves to be addressing ethical questions in the only way possible: by
justifying moral norms through appeals to timeless and universal standards
of reason. They do not see that what they take to be timeless standards of
reason are impoverished remnants of a larger philosophical and social
36
For example, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? claims that both liberalism and the Scottish enlight-
enment are traditions to which one might reasonably be drawn. Other traditions, particularly
Aristotelian Thomism, can be shown to be rationally superior to them, but this is not because
liberalism or the enlightenment involve too much inconsistency for any rational person to hold them.
See WJ, Chapter 20.
96 The critical approach: MacIntyre