Carolina QuotesI have confronted theoretical positions whose protagonists claim that what I take to be historically produced characteristics of what is specifically modern are in fact the timelessly necessary characteristics of all and any moral judgment, of all and any selfhood.
Alasdair MacIntyre Connected to the Carolinas
Source
p. 35
- work
- After Virtue (2007 version, 3rd Ed.)
- year
- 2007
- locator
- p. 35
Cite this record
“I have confronted theoretical positions whose protagonists c…” Alasdair MacIntyre. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-3BAAFEAD7E. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/3baafead7e
More from Alasdair MacIntyre
In The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966) and also in To My Fellow Teachers (1975) Philip Rieff has documented with devastating insight a number of the ways in which truth has been displaced as a value and replaced by psychological effectiveness. The idioms of therapy have invaded all too successfully such spheres as those of education and of religion.
On Kant’s view it can never follow from the fact that God commands us to do such-and-such that we ought to do such-and-such. In order for us to reach such a conclusion we would also have to know that we always ought to do what God commands. But this last we could not know unless we ourselves possessed a standard of moral judgment independent of God’s commandments by means of which we could judge God’s deeds and words and so find the latter morally worthy of obedience. But clearly if we possess such a standard, the commandments of God will be redundant.
There ought not be two histories, one of political and moral action and one of political and moral theorizing, because there were not two pasts, one populated only by actions, the other only by theories. Every action is the bearer and expression of more or less theory-laden beliefs and concepts; every piece of theorizing and every expression of belief is a politcal and moral action.