ABSTRACT
Alasdair MacIntyre (b. 1929) is one of the most influential and controversial figures in late-twentieth/early twenty-first century Anglo-American philosophy. He has written critically but also appreciatively on Kierkegaard at a number of points in his career, and, although Kierkegaard is not one of the most important influences on him, MacIntyre’s reflections on Kierkegaard appear to have been of some significance for the development of his thought. And Kierkegaard continues, it would seem, to be a figure of some significance for him. Moreover, MacIntyre’s work has provided an important point of reference for Kierkegaardians who want to bring Kierkegaard into dialogue with contemporary philosophy. For MacIntyre has provided a particularly clear and incisive version of the common criticism that Kierkegaard is an irrationalist, in response to which a number of commentators have been provoked into developing rich and nuanced accounts of the essential rationality of Kierkegaardian existential choice. But MacIntyre has also been in large measure responsible for the remarkable revival of Aristotelian-style virtue ethics in recent philosophy, and this has opened up new possibilities for fruitful dialogue between Kierkegaardians and contemporary ethicists. In particular, it has helped to make perspicuous the extent to which Kierkegaard is concerned with character and the virtues, as much if not more than with choice and the “leap” of faith. MacIntyre’s work, then, has acted as an important stimulus, both negative and positive, to Kierkegaard scholarship, and to attempts to show the continuing contemporary relevance of Kierkegaard’s thought.
