After a cataclysm: that defines our moment, claims Alasdair MacIntyre in his classic 1981 work, After Virtue. Yes, now is after a cataclysm: the grinding down – almost total annihilation – of ways of life that offer an orientation to what matters most, and of institutions – think the family, or even more concretely, the family dinner, or less prosaically, how to live with death (and not to flee from it, or try to cover it over): how do we spend time with someone who is mourning the loss of their spouse just moments before? We once knew. The wrecking ball we call modernity, and the fuel that powers it, capital, MacIntyre declares again and again – and continuing to speak this way well after having ceased to call himself a Marxist – has … [Read more...] about After Cataclysm: MacIntyre, Marburg, and the Circle of Life
On the Passing of Alasdair MacIntyre
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