A towering figure has passed. As an undergraduate at Brown University, I can say that Alasdair MacIntyre influenced me more than any other academic writer. I would even say,"he saved me," as he did so many people like me, from the debilitating moral and cultural relativism that so many of us at that time and place were heir to. More recently, I have come to appreciate his perspective on REIFICATION and COMMODIFICATION, the tendency of our culture to turn everything in its purview into a THING that can be bought, sold, or traded. (As a Roman Catholic, he nevertheless seemed to find no cause for hesitation in sounding like a member of the Frankfurt School. See Virtue and Politics Alasdair MacIntyre's Revolutionary Aristotelianism, eds … [Read more...] about On the Passing of Alasdair MacIntyre
36 LEARNING MATTERS