The Moral Problems of Liberalism: Alasdair MacIntyre Explained

The twenty-first century is experiencing significant moral and cultural challenges. The prevalence of wokeism and moral relativism, the idea that right and wrong do not exist is encouraging conservative reactions in the public. Believe it or not, but the Scottish-American philosopher, Alasdair MacItyre, knew all of this would happen.

MacIntyre argued that the age of Enlightenment caused a moral catastrophe in the West because it destroyed the building blocks of morality itself. MacIntyre argued that Western civilization had built its moral values off human nature and the age of Enlightenment through this all away.
Alasdair MacIntyre thought that the Enlightenment thinkers ‘set out to replace traditional forms of morality using a secular reasoning that did not respect man’s nature or man’s purpose. Instead what the Enlightenment did was destroy Aristotle’s notion of a virtuous life that had shaped Western thought for nearly two thousand years. The Age of Enlightenment rejected the idea of the telos, the idea that the universe and all things worked in a particular way and it was in man’s best interest to respect that purpose. For example, men and women were supposed to procreate and human beings are supposed to strive towards the highest good.

Moreover, Aristotle and other monotheistic religions taught that human beings, like all objects in the world, exist for a purpose and acting morally was to fulfill each individual’s purpose. In this video, we are going to understand the fantastic Alasdair MacIntyre, his philosophy and why he is so critical for the cultural and moral transformation of the West. I hope you enjoy this video and you’re watching All Things Humanities.

[ainemurray]

"As I write, large numbers of working-class Americans, especially black Americans, have been demonstrating in the streets against the arbitrary, brutal, and sometimes lethal mistreatment of black young men by white police officers. Those of them interviewed on television as to their reasons for acting as they did were highly articulate, made important distinctions between good and bad reasons for various kinds of response, and showed themselves to be in varying degrees both responsible and reflective." MacIntyre, 2016. MacIntyre was critical of academia and detachment from lived experience but to use him to denounce what you call "wokeism" is just ridiculous- he was hugely informed by Marxism, even after he converted to Catholicism.

[misterBlechle]

I have to say, I don't like how you frame MacIntyres philosophy for your own, apparently right leaning, political agenda. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with your opinion but - in my view - MacIntyre isn't really a modern right wing philosopher, or a modern conservative, neither a classical left wing philosopher. The way I understand Macintyre, he sees modern right and left wing as two sides of the same coin. If you read "Revolutionary Aristotelianism: Ethics, Resistance and Utopia" you really see how deeply Macintyre is still influenced by early Marx - which makes sense, as the early Marx was strongly influenced by Aristotelian philosophy.

[AJOxford-flsi]

You keep mentioning wokeism, as if it epitomizes liberalism and the pursuit of happiness, and we can just leave out MacIntyre’s critique of capitalism.

[niiflinstone]

Not familiar with this content creator but the attempt to explain MacIntyre for conservative desires is audacious, if not foolhardy.

[ryanohare]

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what a poor interpretation of MacIntyre. Alternatively, what a great example of how to make anything you read conform to your values!

[philippafhelmstrm]

This involves many misunderstandings about MacIntyres philosophy. But I'm too tired to write a big post about it. Just be aware of it.

[GodOfTheInternets]

This video is cherry picking: “Modern systematic politics, whether liberal, *conservative*, radical, or socialist, simply has to be rejected from a standpoint that owes genuine allegiance to the tradition of the virtues; for modern politics itself expresses in its institutional forms a systematic rejection of that tradition” (After Virtue 255).

[greengorilla]

Not a utilitarian, but Bentham had a hedonic calculus with seven criteria that looked beyond the mere instant gratification of base desires: Fecundity, duration, intensity, certainly or uncertainty, propinquity and remoteness, extent, and purity. The biggest drawback of utilitarianism is its ability to sacrifice a minority (numerically) of a population in order to secure the happiness of the majority.

[raymonddonahue]

Agree with MacIntyre. Moral relativity is damaging lives and the West. i think it's nearly impossible for it to change.

[Letikx]

nicely said thank you soooo much ! i hven my fianls tommorow for ethics and i hope a question come up on metaethics !!

[asdfasdf]

Are you familiar with Keith Woods and Joel Davis?

[benlenz]

God in heaven, have you actually read any MacIntyre? To take just one example, he is quite clear in the postscript to after virtue that he is NOT defending tradition as such but a particular aristotillean tradition of virtues he lays out in the book. He also says there (and on many other occassions) that he is NOT defending virtue ethics or communitarianism, nor has he to my knowledge commented on wokeism at all despite being quite alive. The critique of wokeism as a construct frankly would probably be liberal by his lights (which is not to say he'd defend wokeism, just that the rights framework it's critics used would be as ridiculous to him as it's inverse).

[He.knows.nothing]

I identify myself as a virtue ethicist and i ground it ontologically in moral naturalism which MacIntyre claims to be the objective source of morality via our human nature, but as you claim at the end he doesnt reaply support it as far as we can tell. I cant help but believe that virtue ethics is inherently relative as its existence is contingent upon the phenomenology of human experiences of virtues which are themselves each unique to the individual who experiences them. Of course aspects of the phenomenology of what is good and virtuous are shared because we are all humans and the foundations of our experiences are all grounded in the same human biological realities, but even those realities differ and MacIntyre seems to believe that because this is normal for most people then it must be true for all, an argument Thomas Aquinas himself would make, but not one that can actually be objectively proven, its just an appeal to majority being used to presuppose the objectivity of a standard.

This leads me to percieve that we arent operating with something either wholly objective nor subjective, but something that manifests relatively through the interactions between the two in such a way that not every moral idea can be considered valid, but also that different moral ideas that are valid can exist that contradict each other in such that we must find a way to make peace within the agnostic context of our paradox.

You use abortion as an example and this is entirely the case for this conversation. Even if morality was wholly objective, without any means of measurement, there is simply no way to determine objectively whether or not one moral idea usurps the morality of another. We can believe in such a thing as a soul or a purpose to again validate our presupposition that a fetus' life is equal to that of an adult and their moral worth would usurp the right to automomy of the mother, but we are barred from actually grounding that belief in reality. Advocating for pro life is just as much an act of faith as arguing pro choice for someone who lacks both of those presuppositions as well as the ability to disprove them.

An agnostic frame for morality such as my presentation of relative virtue ethics seems much more compatible with the only dimension of morality that we can realistically derive information from which is our abilility to rationalize the lived experiences of moral phenomenology, i.e. virtue.

[disciplemike]

Barak Obama once said that he was a christian, but he would not allow his (christian) beliefs to dictate how to govern a country. I thought that was an absurd thing to say. If a person believes in God but does not trust God's instructions as a blueprint for society, something is amiss. At any rate, obviously my filter on morality is the Bible. This is why that tree of the knowledge of good and evil was in the garden. Some people will refuse God's leadership and choose to decide for themselves what is right or wrong, (moral absolutes). When it is left to our own pitiful judgment, we screw it up. As it says in Proverbs 21:2, every way of man is right in his own eyes.

[LoGos]

Steven Pinker provides a much more substantial analysis of the moral and intellectual consequences of the Enlightenment in two books: "The Blank Slate" and "Enlightenment Now!" Unlike Macintyre, Pinker correctly points out that the Enlightenment was not a set of ideas, but a set of epistemic methods and standards. It was about how to think rather than what to think. Any critique of "Enlightement ideas" that misses this point is incomplete. Pinker dissects bad Enlightenment-era ideas such as Rouseau's the "noble savage, " Locke's "blank slate, " and Cartesian dualism because they are demonstrably false. But the important point is that the Enlightenment provided the foundational methods and standards for SHOWING that they are wrong. These methods: mechanistic reasoning over teleological reasoning, the scientific method, quantitative rigor, formal logic, methodic empiricism, universal humanism, etc., have provided the basis of the astounding progress humanity has made in the ensuing centuries, doubling the lifespan of human beings, eradicating slavery and countless diseases, and improving the quality of life for billions of people.

[menjii]

crazy how someone can be so deep into philosophy and miss the whole point

[lsobrien]

It was fine until you brought in Peterson, pretending he is a "philosopher".

[markdavidson]

So it it human nature or Catholicism that we need to adhere to? Isn’t rational thought also an illustration of human nature? Lastly, isn’t ‘objective morality’ just someone’s subjective morality that has been renamed ‘objective’.

[pagantree]

This is a great synopsis of McIntyre's philosophy. I read after virtue two years ago, but needed this reminder of the key points, Thanks :)

[Emmett]

The concept of human nature is subjective especially chronologically. One cannot accurately surmise the role of human nature comparative to morality because both are subjective. The concept of objective morality is a flawed and has no allowance for cultural dichotomies. For example, moral code within biblical Scripts may not be accurate due to the endless amounts of different translations as well as the misinterpretation of cultures within antiquity. The second topic I'd like to address is cultural morality within the prehistoric Society in Scotland itself also known as the pictish kingdom. Before the Advent of Christianity pictish culture had a heavy reliance on a matriarchal hierarchy. Denying this is Insidious and serves an ulterior motive based upon post-renaissance chauvinism. To state that the essence of liberalism was only prevalent in a post-renaissance period is not only inaccurate but damaging to cultures which did not base their morality off of scripture. That notion is biblically centered to directly counter the ideology of matriarchal societies. It is the future not the bug. In my personal opinion the presence of liberalism is a direct reaction to the oppressive nature of Western chauvinism. Without the presence and over-reliance on chauvinism liberalism would have no need to exist.