ABSTRACT

Theologians such as John Milbank and Stanley Hauerwas have in various ways turned to Aristotle and the Greeks to recover a discourse about politics and character that contrasts with the dominant discourse of modem liberalism. Alasdair MacIntyre presents his own apocalyptic vision to describe the state of moral discourse in modernity. Imagine a time, when a series of natural disasters occurs and is blamed on scientists. A reign of terror ensues in which physicists are lynched, laboratories destroyed, and textbooks burned. Drawing on Aristotle's political and ethical vision and the development of the tradition through Augustine and Aquinas, MacIntyre seeks to direct us toward "the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. The church in America finds itself implicated in the ongoing debates about modernity, politics, and ethics.