ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the social and political implications of Martha Nussbaum's interpretation and defense of Aristotle's ethics. It examines the social and political issues to ask what standpoint Nussbaum and MacIntyre occupy that makes them think it important to reclaim Aristotle's account of the moral life. According to MacIntyre and Nussbaum, Aristotle rightly saw the necessary interdependence of happiness, virtue, and friendship and the correlative complexity of our moral existence. So MacIntyre and Nussbaum have an equal stake in defending Aristotle's account of practical wisdom. Practical wisdom is not a faculty that can be divorced from our desires or from our formation by the virtues. Nussbaum explicitly rejects the need for an Archimedian point where we might begin ethical reflection. Nussbaum is aware that Aristotle's account of the moral life is in deep tension with the presumption of democratic society.
