Alasdair MacIntyre Quotes
Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre was a Scottish-American moral and political philosopher and one of the principal architects of the late twentieth-century revival of virtue ethics. His After Virtue, published in 1981, argued that modern moral discourse is the surviving fragment of a coherence it has lost, and that the recovery of intelligible ethical life requires a recovery of tradition, narrative, and practice. The quotes below are attributed to Alasdair MacIntyre, organized by topic.
Alasdair MacIntyre on Mind
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Attributed to Alasdair MacIntyre:
“Man without his stories is unintelligible.”
Alasdair MacIntyre on Politics
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Attributed to Alasdair MacIntyre:
“A living tradition is an historically extended, socially embodied argument.”
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Attributed to Alasdair MacIntyre:
“The barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for some time.”
Alasdair MacIntyre on Virtue
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Attributed to Alasdair MacIntyre:
“I can only answer the question 'What am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question 'Of what story do I find myself a part?'”
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Attributed to Alasdair MacIntyre:
“Practices are constituted by goods internal to them.”