ABSTRACT
Getting to grips with Alasdair MacIntyre’s “interminably long project” is as important for philosophers as it is frustrating. Important, because the pioneering investigations in moral philosophy which began with his book After Virtue are undoubtedly deep and provocative. For MacIntyre, any serious work in moral philosophy must be, rather as it was for Nietzsche, a matter of “genealogical inquiry”, a patient unpicking of the history of philosophy and culture, in order to trace “the history of an error” or series of errors which led to modernity’s melange. In the Aristotelian/Thomist tradition which MacIntyre champions, it is clear enough what the greatest good is. It is “happiness”, understood as “human flourishing”, which in turn is understood as “fulfilment of form” or “realization of essence”. With Aristotle and still more with Aquinas, then, MacIntyre seems to be saying, we reach the best account of morality so far achieved in human history.
