ABSTRACT
Alasdair MacIntyre was born in Glasgow, but was raised and educated in the London area. Although a Marxist as a student, he later repudiated Marxist philosophy but remained critical of liberalism, the political and economic philosophy that defines modern Western capitalism and which he came to see as a destructive ideology. Instead he looked back to the concept of the virtues as described by the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. From the late 1970s, this idea became fundamental to his thought and writing—a direction in his thinking that came to fruition with After Virtue, published in 1981. After Virtue is a work of moral philosophy—that is, it is concerned with the theory of moral thought and behavior. After Virtue starts from the position that modern moral philosophy has failed to explain how people should live a good life. After Virtue is generally regarded as Alasdair MacIntyre's most important and influential work.
