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'What does it mean to be a human being?' Given this perennial
question, Alasdair MacIntyre, one of America's preeminent
philosophers, presents a compelling argument on the necessity and
importance of philosophy. Because of a need to better understand
Catholic philosophical thought, especially in the context of its
historical development and realizing that philosophers interact
within particular social and cultural situations, MacIntyre offers
this brief history of Catholic philosophy. Tracing the idea of God
through different philosophers' engagement of God and how this
engagement has played out in universities, MacIntyre provides a
valuable, lively, and insightful study of the disintegration of
academic disciplines with knowledge. MacIntyre then demonstrates
the dangerous implications of this happening and how universities
can and ought to renew a shared understanding of knowledge in their
mission. This engaging work will be a benefit and a delight to all
readers.
'I have no doubt at all, that if philosophy is to prosper in the
coming decades, it will have to treat with great seriousness that
splendid seriousness that splendid body of philosophical writing of
which the essays in this volume constitute one major part'. from
the Foreword by Alasdair MacIntyre When historians of philosophy
turn to the work of distinguished philosopher Frederick L. Will,
Pragmatism and Realism will be an important part of the discussion.
In this collection of nine essays, Will demonstrates that a social
account of human knowledge is consistent with, and ultimately
requires, realism. A timely contribution to the current debate, the
book culminates in a naturalistic account of the generation,
assessment, and revision of cognitive, moral and social norms. It
is written clearly enough for undergraduates, and includes a
critical introduction by the editor discussing the bearing of
Will's views on current debates among analytic epistemologists,
philosophers of science, and moral theorists.
When After Virtue first appeared in 1981, it was recognized as a
significant and potentially controversial critique of contemporary
moral philosophy. Newsweek called it "a stunning new study of
ethics by one of the foremost moral philosophers in the
English-speaking world." Since that time, the book has been
translated into more than fifteen foreign languages and has sold
over one hundred thousand copies. Now, twenty-five years later, the
University of Notre Dame Press is pleased to release the third
edition of After Virtue, which includes a new prologue "After
Virtue after a Quarter of a Century." In this classic work,
Alasdair MacIntyre examines the historical and conceptual roots of
the idea of virtue, diagnoses the reasons for its absence in
personal and public life, and offers a tentative proposal for its
recovery. While the individual chapters are wide-ranging, once
pieced together they comprise a penetrating and focused argument
about the price of modernity. In the Third Edition prologue,
MacIntyre revisits the central theses of the book and concludes
that although he has learned a great deal and has supplemented and
refined his theses and arguments in other works, he has "as yet
found no reason for abandoning the major contentions" of this book.
While he recognizes that his conception of human beings as virtuous
or vicious needed not only a metaphysical but also a biological
grounding, ultimately he remains "committed to the thesis that it
is only from the standpoint of a very different tradition, one
whose beliefs and presuppositions were articulated in their
classical form by Aristotle, that we can understand both the
genesis and the predicament of moral modernity."
What is right? What is wrong? How do we decide? To a remarkable
extent, our decision-making is determined by the origins of the
ethical ideas that we employ and the history of their
development.;"A Short History of Ethics" is an introduction to the
subject, presenting in concise form an insightful history of moral
philosophy in the West, from the Greeks to contemporary times. In
clear and readable prose, Alasdair MacIntyre leads the reader
towards a greater understanding of what lies behind our ethical
decisions.
A Short History of Ethics has over the past thirty years become a
key philosophical contribution to studies on morality and ethics.
Alasdair MacIntyre writes a new preface for this second edition
which looks at the book 'thirty years on' and considers its impact.
A Short History of Ethics guides the reader through the history of
moral philosophy from the Greeks to contemporary times. MacIntyre
emphasises the importance of a historical context to moral concepts
and ideas showing the relevance of philosophical queries on moral
concepts and the importance of a historical account of ethics. A
Short History of Ethics is an important contribution written by one
of the most important living philosophers. Ideal for all philosophy
students interested in ethics and morality.
'What does it mean to be a human being?' Given this perennial
question, Alasdair MacIntyre, one of America's preeminent
philosophers, presents a compelling argument on the necessity and
importance of philosophy. Because of a need to better understand
Catholic philosophical thought, especially in the context of its
historical development and realizing that philosophers interact
within particular social and cultural situations, MacIntyre offers
this brief history of Catholic philosophy. Tracing the idea of God
through different philosophers' engagement of God and how this
engagement has played out in universities, MacIntyre provides a
valuable, lively, and insightful study of the disintegration of
academic disciplines with knowledge. MacIntyre then demonstrates
the dangerous implications of this happening and how universities
can and ought to renew a shared understanding of knowledge in their
mission. This engaging work will be a benefit and a delight to all
readers.
This compares humans to other intelligent animals, drawing
conclusions about human social life and our treatment of those whom
he argues we should no longer call "disabled." The author argues
that human beings are independent, practical reasoners, but they
are also dependent animals who must learn from each other in order
to remain largely independent. To flourish, humans must acknowledge
the importance of dependence and independence, both of which are
developed in and through social relationships. This requires the
development of a local community in which individuals discover
their own "goods" through the discovery of a common Good.
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After Virtue (Paperback)
Alasdair MacIntyre
1
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R305
R288
Discovery Miles 2 880
Save R17 (6%)
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Ships in 5 - 10 working days
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Highly controversial when it was first published in 1981, Alasdair
MacIntyre's After Virtue has since established itself as a landmark
work in contemporary moral philosophy. In this book, MacIntyre
sought to address a crisis in moral language that he traced back to
a European Enlightenment that had made the formulation of moral
principles increasingly difficult. In the search for a way out of
this impasse, MacIntyre returns to an earlier strand of ethical
thinking, that of Aristotle, who emphasised the importance of
'virtue' to the ethical life. More than thirty years after its
original publication, After Virtue remains a work that is
impossible to ignore for anyone interested in our understanding of
ethics and morality today.
The 1990s saw a revival of interest in Kierkegaard's thought,
affecting the fields of theology, social theory, and literary and
cultural criticism. The resulting discussions have done much to
discredit the earlier misreadings of Kierkegaard's works. This
collection of essays by Kierkegaard scholars represents the new
consensus on Kierkegaard and his conception of moral selfhood. It
answers the charges of one of Kierkegaard's biggest critics,
contemporary philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, and shows how some of
Kierkegaard's insights into tradition, virtuous character, and the
human good may actually support MacIntyre's ideas. The contributors
include Alasdair MacIntyre and Philip Quinn.
Edith Stein lived an unconventional life. Born into a devout Jewish
family, she drifted into atheism in her mid teens, took up the
study of philosophy, studied with Edmund Husserl, the founder of
phenomenology, became a pioneer in the women's movement in Germany,
a military nurse in World War I, converted from atheism to Catholic
Christianity, became a Carmelite nun, was murdered at
Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942, and canonized by Pope John Paul II.
Renowned philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre here presents a fascinating
account of Edith Stein's formative development as a philosopher. To
accomplish this, he offers a concise survey of her context, German
philosophy in the first decades of the twentieth century. His
treatment of Stein demonstrates how philosophy can form a person
and not simply be an academic formulation in the abstract.
MacIntyre probes the phenomenon of conversion in Stein as well as
contemporaries Franz Rosenzweig, and Georg Luckas. His clear and
concise account of Stein's formation in the context of her mentors
and colleagues reveals the crucial questions and insights that her
writings offer to those who study Husserl, Heidegger or the Thomism
of the 1920's and 30's. Written with a clarity that reaches beyond
an academic audience, this book will reward careful study by anyone
interested in Edith Stein as thinker, pioneer and saint.
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The Ethical Demand (Hardcover)
Knud Ejler Logstrup; Introduction by Hans Fink, Alasdair MacIntyre
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R2,924
Discovery Miles 29 240
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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The author writes...'This history of moral philosophy which runs
from the Greeks to contemporary Anglo-Saxon discussion is
necessarily compressed and selective, but is intended to enable the
general reader and the student to place particular texts in moral
philosophy in an historical perspective. The function of this
perspective is to clarify three kinds of historical and
philosophical connection whose importance is often underrated. The
first is a matter of the debts which moral philosophers owe to
their predecessors; the second concerns the question of the nature
of the moral concepts which furnish any moral philosopher with the
objects of his enquiry upon moral concepts themselves and the
extent to which the philosophical analysis of a concept may play a
part in transforming or even discrediting it. A consequence of
these preoccupations is that the book contains a higher proportion
of purely philosophical enquiry than might be expected in an
historical work.'
Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, the sequel to After Virtue, is a
persuasive argument of there not being rationality that is not the
rationality of some tradition. MacIntyre examines the problems
presented by the existence of rival traditions of inquiry in the
cases of four major philosophers: Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas,
and Hume.
This lecture is MacIntyre's most explicit defense of his approach
to Thomistic metaphysics. This lecture follows MacIntyre's argument
in After Virtue that modern philosophy has very literally lost its
way, and the problems it faces are insoluble. The difficulties are
twofold, and stem from the Cartesian turn to the self in the XVith
century. Modern philosophy cannot reestablish contact with the
outside world when our starting point is self-knowledge, and modern
philosophy also cannot accept that any principle could be 'first'
in any absolute sense of the word, because final causality has been
rejected. MacIntyre claims that Thomism does not suffer these
defects, but he cautions against a premature victory, because
Thomism has been decisively rejected by modern philosophy and
modern science, so that there is no chance of effective dialogue
between Thomism and other traditions. The very vocabulary of
Thomism is a stumbling block. However, modern philosophy has not
been able to completely eliminate the Aristotelian roots of all
philosophy and science, and so keeps returning to themes that it
cannot adequately address. Thus MacIntyre proposes to use the tools
of modern philosophies, such as the genealogical narrative, to help
reconnect modern philosophy and Thomism. A historical approach
might make the rejection, and the reasons for it, evident, and
allow fruitful dialogue by allowing for the fruits of modern
philosophy to be discussed in a context that will allow them to
finally flourish. Essentially, the goal is to enable contemporary
philosophy to become more itself by freeing it from the tension
created by the premises that cast doubt upon the philosophical
enterprise.
Edith Stein lived an unconventional life. Born into a devout Jewish
family, she drifted into atheism in her mid teens, took up the
study of philosophy, studied with Edmund Husserl, the founder of
phenomenology, became a pioneer in the women's movement in Germany,
a military nurse in World War I, converted from atheism to Catholic
Christianity, became a Carmelite nun, was murdered at
Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942, and canonized by Pope John Paul II.
Renowned philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre here presents a fascinating
account of Edith Stein's formative development as a philosopher. To
accomplish this, he offers a concise survey of her context, German
philosophy in the first decades of the twentieth century. His
treatment of Stein demonstrates how philosophy can form a person
and not simply be an academic formulation in the abstract.
MacIntyre probes the phenomenon of conversion in Stein as well as
contemporaries Franz Rosenzweig, and Georg Luckas. His clear and
concise account of Stein's formation in the context of her mentors
and colleagues reveals the crucial questions and insights that her
writings offer to those who study Husserl, Heidegger or the Thomism
of the 1920's and 30's. Written with a clarity that reaches beyond
an academic audience, this book will reward careful study by anyone
interested in Edith Stein as thinker, pioneer and saint.
Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, the sequel to After Virtue, is a
persuasive argument of there not being rationality that is not the
rationality of some tradition. MacIntyre examines the problems
presented by the existence of rival traditions of inquiry in the
cases of four major philosophers: Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas,
and Hume.
Alasdair MacIntyre explores some central philosophical, political
and moral claims of modernity and argues that a proper
understanding of human goods requires a rejection of these claims.
In a wide-ranging discussion, he considers how normative and
evaluative judgments are to be understood, how desire and practical
reasoning are to be characterized, what it is to have adequate
self-knowledge, and what part narrative plays in our understanding
of human lives. He asks, further, what it would be to understand
the modern condition from a neo-Aristotelian or Thomistic
perspective, and argues that Thomistic Aristotelianism, informed by
Marx's insights, provides us with resources for constructing a
contemporary politics and ethics which both enable and require us
to act against modernity from within modernity. This rich and
important book builds on and advances MacIntyre's thinking in
ethics and moral philosophy, and will be of great interest to
readers in both fields.
Back to the Rough Ground is a philosophical investigation of
practical knowledge, with major import for professional practice
and the ethical life in modern society. Its purpose is to clarify
the kind of knowledge that informs good practice in a range of
disciplines such as education, psychotherapy, medicine, management,
and law. Through reflection on key modern thinkers who have revived
cardinal insights of Aristotle, and a sustained engagement with the
Philosopher himself, it presents a radical challenge to the
scientistic assumptions that have dominated how these professional
domains have been conceived, practiced, and institutionalized.
Writing in an age that exalted reason, the Scottish-born skeptic
David Hume was the first modern philosopher to emphasize the role
of psychology, or “passion,” in the formulation of moral
judgments and ethical systems. Included in this edition of his
writings is the entire text of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles
of Morals and selections from other works such as A Treatise on
Human Nature and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Alasdair
MacIntyre clarifies the relationship of Hume’s intellect to his
Calvinist background and cogently summarizes his importance to the
development of moral philosophy.
A Short History of Ethics is a significant contribution written by
one of the most important living philosophers. For the second
edition Alasdair MacIntyre has included a new preface in which he
examines his book “thirty years on” and considers its impact.
It remains an important work, ideal for all students interested in
ethics and morality.
When After Virtue first appeared in 1981, it was recognized as a
significant and potentially controversial critique of contemporary
moral philosophy. Newsweek called it "a stunning new study of
ethics by one of the foremost moral philosophers in the
English-speaking world." Since that time, the book has been
translated into more than fifteen foreign languages and has sold
over one hundred thousand copies. Now, twenty-five years later, the
University of Notre Dame Press is pleased to release the third
edition of After Virtue, which includes a new prologue "After
Virtue after a Quarter of a Century." In this classic work,
Alasdair MacIntyre examines the historical and conceptual roots of
the idea of virtue, diagnoses the reasons for its absence in
personal and public life, and offers a tentative proposal for its
recovery. While the individual chapters are wide-ranging, once
pieced together they comprise a penetrating and focused argument
about the price of modernity. In the Third Edition prologue,
MacIntyre revisits the central theses of the book and concludes
that although he has learned a great deal and has supplemented and
refined his theses and arguments in other works, he has "as yet
found no reason for abandoning the major contentions" of this book.
While he recognizes that his conception of human beings as virtuous
or vicious needed not only a metaphysical but also a biological
grounding, ultimately he remains "committed to the thesis that it
is only from the standpoint of a very different tradition, one
whose beliefs and presuppositions were articulated in their
classical form by Aristotle, that we can understand both the
genesis and the predicament of moral modernity."
MacIntyre's project, here as elsewhere, is to put up a fight
against philosophical relativism. . . . The current form is the
'incommensurability,' so-called, of differing standpoints or
conceptual schemes. Mr. MacIntyre claims that different schools of
philosophy must differ fundamentally about what counts as a
rational way to settle intellectual differences. Reading between
the lines, one can see that he has in mind nationalities as well as
thinkers, and literary criticism as well as academic philosophy.
More explicitly, he labels and discusses three significantly
different standpoints: the encyclopedic, the genealogical and the
traditional. . . . [T]he chapters on the development of Christian
philosophy between Augustine and Duns Scotus are very interesting
indeed. . . . [MacIntyre] must be the past, present, future, and
all-time philosophical historians' historian of philosophy. -The
New York Times Book Review
Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the few professional philosophers
whose writings span both technical analytical philosophy and those
general moral or intellectual questions that laymen often suppose
to be the province of philosophy but that are seldom discussed
within its bounds. The unity of this book-made up both of original
and previously published pieces-lies in its attempt to expose this
dichotomy and to link beliefs and moral theories with philosophical
criticism. The author successively criticizes Christianity,
Marxism, and psychoanalysis for their failure to express the forms
of thought and action that constitute our contemporary social life,
and argues that a greater understanding of our complex world will
require a more thorough inquiry into the philosophy of the social
sciences.
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Metaphysical Beliefs (Paperback)
Stephen Toulmin, Ronald W. Hepburn, Alasdair MacIntyre
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R765
R633
Discovery Miles 6 330
Save R132 (17%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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During the mid-1950s, three books appeared which, while
theologically unfashionable at the time, can now be seen to have
pointed the way forward that theology had to take. New Essays in
Philosophical Theology, edited by Antony Flew and Alasdair
Maclntyre, has been available ever since, and has been in
increasing demand. Religious Language, by Ian T. Ramsey, now Bishop
of Durham, was out of print in England for a while, but has been
reissued and is in a second new impression. Metaphysical Beliefs,
on the other hand, was never reprinted. It consists of three long
essays, by Stephen Toulmin on 'Contemporary Scientific Mythology';
by Ronald Hepburn on 'Poetry and Religious Belief'; and by Alasdair
Maclntyre on 'The Logical Status of Religious Belief'. When the
book first appeared, The Times Literary Supplement commented: 'This
volume should be widely read and discussed. It is philosophical
thinking at a high level, because it faces live issues, avoids
asperity towards opponents, and should provoke the right kind of
controversy.' More than ten years later, the same verdict still
holds true
Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the most creative and important
philosophers working today. This volume presents a selection of his
classic essays on ethics and politics collected together for the
first time, focussing particularly on the themes of moral
disagreement, moral dilemmas, and truthfulness and its importance.
The essays range widely in scope, from Aristotle and Aquinas and
what we need to learn from them, to our contemporary economic and
social structures and the threat which they pose to the realization
of the forms of ethical life. They will appeal to a wide range of
readers across philosophy and especially in moral philosophy,
political philosophy, and theology.
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