I reacquaint myself with MacIntyre
Well, the vaccination did give me aches, chills, etc. for much of Saturday. But by Easter morning I felt all better – except in my arm. I continue to have “pain at the injection site.”
I should have remembered, before I got the shot, that this area of my shoulder is where Samuel likes to rest his head.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My Uncle Tim has asked me to give two more guest lectures. The topic is Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue.
I can think of at least four other graduates of Bethel’s philosophy program who are better qualified to discuss this book. Still, I’m glad for the chance to reacquaint myself with it.
I now know more about the philosophers discussed therein, and so I grasp better what MacIntyre is saying.
(Famous last words.)
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Usually, I take my sweet time with any philosophical work longer than two or three chapters. I might spend a quarter of a year, or half of a year, or two or three years on something as long as After Virtue (which doesn’t even exceed 300 pages).
(Of course, I would also read other things during that time.)
This reading of the book will have taken just three weeks.
I’ll also have read several articles by or about MacIntyre – which is all to the good, except that I feel a little weary from having stuck so closely to one author, day after day after day. I keep on having to resist the temptation to read within fields that MacIntyre mentions but doesn’t discuss in detail. I’ve been gazing longingly at my books on social epistemology and free will; more generally, my appetite for studying the metaphysics of agency has been whetted again.
There is just too much to read.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
What my uncle’s students are making of After Virtue, I’m curious to find out. It can’t be easy going for them. Too many of the names, they won’t know from “Adam.”
Some polemical texts serve as good introductions to the ideas that those texts argue against. This is emphatically false of After Virtue.
If a student’s sole exposure to, e.g., John Rawls’s ideas is through this book, it will be very hard for him or her to give those ideas a fighting chance.
To be fair, if one’s sole exposure to Rawls’s ideas is through Rawls’s own books, it also may be hard to give those ideas a fighting chance, just because those books are so long, complex, and repetitive that it is hard to read them carefully.
I wouldn’t say the same about Rawls’s articles. Rawls’s ideas may be expressed canonically in A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, but often they are more alluring, more clearly motivated, in his briefer, less rigorous statements.
To some extent, this also is true of MacIntyre’s writing. This summary of After Virtue should help the students.
But I do hope that they carefully read After Virtue’s chapter 14, “The Nature of the Virtues.” The book’s constructive proposal is much more interesting than its criticisms of rival philosophies.
I should have remembered, before I got the shot, that this area of my shoulder is where Samuel likes to rest his head.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My Uncle Tim has asked me to give two more guest lectures. The topic is Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue.
I can think of at least four other graduates of Bethel’s philosophy program who are better qualified to discuss this book. Still, I’m glad for the chance to reacquaint myself with it.
I now know more about the philosophers discussed therein, and so I grasp better what MacIntyre is saying.
(Famous last words.)
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Usually, I take my sweet time with any philosophical work longer than two or three chapters. I might spend a quarter of a year, or half of a year, or two or three years on something as long as After Virtue (which doesn’t even exceed 300 pages).
(Of course, I would also read other things during that time.)
This reading of the book will have taken just three weeks.
I’ll also have read several articles by or about MacIntyre – which is all to the good, except that I feel a little weary from having stuck so closely to one author, day after day after day. I keep on having to resist the temptation to read within fields that MacIntyre mentions but doesn’t discuss in detail. I’ve been gazing longingly at my books on social epistemology and free will; more generally, my appetite for studying the metaphysics of agency has been whetted again.
There is just too much to read.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
What my uncle’s students are making of After Virtue, I’m curious to find out. It can’t be easy going for them. Too many of the names, they won’t know from “Adam.”
Some polemical texts serve as good introductions to the ideas that those texts argue against. This is emphatically false of After Virtue.
If a student’s sole exposure to, e.g., John Rawls’s ideas is through this book, it will be very hard for him or her to give those ideas a fighting chance.
To be fair, if one’s sole exposure to Rawls’s ideas is through Rawls’s own books, it also may be hard to give those ideas a fighting chance, just because those books are so long, complex, and repetitive that it is hard to read them carefully.
I wouldn’t say the same about Rawls’s articles. Rawls’s ideas may be expressed canonically in A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, but often they are more alluring, more clearly motivated, in his briefer, less rigorous statements.
To some extent, this also is true of MacIntyre’s writing. This summary of After Virtue should help the students.
But I do hope that they carefully read After Virtue’s chapter 14, “The Nature of the Virtues.” The book’s constructive proposal is much more interesting than its criticisms of rival philosophies.