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 Blackledge and Knight, Notre Dame, 2011).
A quick story: About 20 years ago, as a dean of adult Jewish learning, I had the privilege of inviting him to speak at Hebrew College, Boston, MA. The response of certain leaders in the organized Jewish community (though not President David Gordis, or Provost Barry Mesch, or Faculty leader, Nehemia Polen) was an ungenerous incredulity, as MacIntyre was a Catholic and an academic writer of some difficulty. MacIntyre himself, on the other hand, was deeply sympathetic to us, who he called on a memorable phone call “so important to the heterogeneity of our academic culture.” He promptly refused an honorarium. Memorably, as Director of Communications Evelyn Herwitz may remember, he insisted that no picture of him be circulated in advance, though, fortunately, he was happy to have his talk described. I only realized somewhat later that the refusal to have his picture circulated was his principled stance against REIFICATION and COMMODIFICATION!
I will always remember him as an example for all of us of a nonconforming thinker, and a wide-ranging intellect, and as importantly from his own point-of-view, I’m sure, as an exemplary practitioner of public-facing philosophy.