ABSTRACT
The chapter explains and explores four themes in Alasdair MacIntyre’s work. These four themes are the narrative unity of a human life, the relationship between fact, theory and value, MacIntyre’s use of the term ‘tradition’, and MacIntyre’s and Richard Rorty’s attitudes to the issues of personal identity and truth. MacIntyre is ready to reach some conclusions: It is possible to return to the question from which this enquiry into the nature of human action and identity started. MacIntyre’s actual procedure, however, in arguing against the fact/value distinction, perhaps leaves something to be desired. He seems to assume that the almost universally accepted thesis in contemporary philosophy, “There are no theory-neutral facts”, automatically entails his desired conclusion, “There are no value-neutral facts”, without any additional argument. Encyclopaedia is incoherent because it tries to stand outside of any particular tradition and to utter only the pronouncements of a universal, timeless reason.
