After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre

Alasdair MacIntyre builds upon virtue ethics, and discusses how virtues within a lived practice lead to a flourishing life with purpose.

The excerpts discussed here are from the following textbook:
Marino, Gordon (editor). Ethics: The Essential Writings. Modern Library 2010.

[FactsMonk]

Thank you very much for insightful video 😊

[daviddawson]

"I should have listened more." I learned that one a bit late in life

[sina]

I think what is missing in trying to understand virtue ethics is the perspective of pragmatism: ultimately deciding what makes a practice virtuous are its consequences. Once you bring that pragmatic criterion and perspective into it, it begins to make more sense (at least to me). It's nice to read a little William James or John Dewey first, and THEN read Aristotle and McIntyre. It gives much more of an anchor with which to moor the arguments being made.

For example, in the example given of being a skilled serial killer, no matter how skilled and well practiced one becomes at it and no matter how much of a tradition it has been throughout human history, most of us can still agree it leads to undesirable outcomes and it makes sense to discourage it and work on getting rid of that practice. It’s OK to get rid of that “tradition”. On the other hand, when Science was just developing in the 17th century, it was not a tradition. It was a revolutionary new movement, mindset, and paradigm- with very powerful and fruitful results. Therefore, it was OK to develop it as a tradition, practice it, and become excellent at it.

But just equating practice with tradition still leaves a lot of questions open. It gets caught in a sort of circular logic: Tradition defines practice, practice defines virtue, and then virtue defines tradition again, and you're back where you started. It doesn't help you understand WHY you need to enter that vicious cycle in the first place in some cases, but not others, and when it's time to get rid of some traditions and practices, and when it's time to work on adapting and developing new ones.