Revolt Against 'Customer Service': MacIntyre on the Managerial Monster God (After Virtue 7)

In Chapters 8 and 9 of After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre argues that social science cannot approximate the physical sciences in predictability and that the bureaucratic manager, king of "customer service" technique is therefore full of, well, something other than expertise. It turns out that freedom entails a lack of predictability, that Machiavellian "Fortuna" is better than being oppressively managed and that complete efficiency produces the breakdown of efficiency in employee/constituent revolt. In Chapter 9, MacIntyre begins the journey away from Nietzsche, whom he considers at least an honest nihilist, and towards Aristotle.

I am Professor of Political Science/Political Philosophy at Kansas State University. I am the author of seven books, including the latest, Ideological Possession and the Rise of the New Right: The Political Thought of Carl Jung (2019). Much of my work has revolved around a critique of classical liberalism and neoliberalism as corrosive to community, honor and moral obligation, humane economics and environmental health. The task ahead is to re-invent community in the modern context to withstand the challenges we are facing now and in the future.

[Finn]

The volume is significantly lower compared to your other videos. Had to crank my volume all the way up.

[robertflury]

That's certainly more animated, a positive concession to current year.

Here's hoping you continue to grow into the future. BTW, Who are your peers on YouTube? It would be great for you, them and us if you guys could start occasionally appearing on each other's channels.

In our current political climate these authors & ideas should be front and center, finding a way to generate more of a buzz seems worth the effort.

[fluxflux]

Thank you for all the work you put into your videos and analysis! Truly appreciated!

[MrDzoni]

This is a great series! I think After Virtue is one of the most important books to read

[colinboyd]

@13:30: the film is "Office Space"

[groupchat]

The first step are more public dances to traditional accordion and folk arrangments. Couples and group dances is a natural and artistic way to generate and localize while globalizing politics. The analytics of the ancients is in the relm of rule organzing but does little for game play.

[groupchat]

They say they want money out of politics how else do we see the kind of person you are but through a setting of dance and games.

[naartarnegol]

...6:04/21:46]● there I will argue that a French loving guy went to a famous French literature magazine. He said [...before 1990 the USSR will be history. ]
Around him?
Sideration and rebuked he was, for Marxisme was utterly zeitgeist.
"Le Marxisme l'horizon indépassable de l'humanité "
Who dared to "question more !?:
Emmanuel Todd, whose works are but essential to grasp the concept of " atomic family "as being the beginning and the end of family choosen concerns.
Thanks for so much madame, enlightening the liaison between that koan:if the moral is not grounded on God, is the richest man raison d'etre .
For when you trillionaire your only concern is to remain such!

[colinboyd]

Why is MacIntyre not a virtue ethicist? Why did he end up a Thomist? This is the sticking point for most of his readers as an anticapitalist thinker, I would imagine. There are many anticapitalist strands in Catholic thought, but haven't been very attractive to the traditional left. And for good reason.