Alasdair MacIntyre,

 

Alasdair MacIntyre, Philosopher Who Saw a ‘New Dark Ages,’ Dies at 96

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這就是為什麼人們普遍認為教師應該引導學生實現自我，而不是宣揚自己的信念。律師、治療師、政府官員以及其他人士也應保持同樣的中立。 麥金泰爾先生屬於一個不同的道德世界。在他最著名的著作《追尋美德》（1981年）中，他認為數千年前，最早的西方哲學家和荷馬神話創造了“美德傳統”，並將其視為客觀真理。對麥金泰爾先生來說，價值中立是「野蠻人」的目標，也是「已經降臨的新黑暗時代」的象徵。 他繼續展現出托洛茨基主義者的辯證激情，偶爾還會發起一位同事稱之為「麥金泰爾式」的辯論。 所有這些人都犯了「情感主義」的錯誤——他們認為人類本質上是由自主的個體組成的集合，他們根據內心的思想或感受選擇自己的原則。 麥金泰爾先生認為，這種出發點只會導致永恆的、無法解決的分歧。他甚至認為，現代政治的所有傳統都已“枯竭”，並拒絕接受現代道德哲學的許多基本工具：托馬斯·霍布斯的社會契約論、約翰·洛克的自然權利論、傑里米·邊沁的道德後果論以及以賽亞·伯林的多元主義。

That is why, for example, people generally think teachers should guide students toward self-realization rather than proselytize

 their own beliefs. The same neutrality is expected of lawyers, therapists, government officials and others.

Mr. MacIntyre belonged to a different moral universe. In his best-known book, “After Virtue” (1981), he argued that thousands of years ago, the earliest Western philosophers and the Homeric myths generated “the tradition of the virtues,” which was treated as objective truth. To Mr. MacIntyre, value neutrality was the goal of “barbarians” and a sign of “the new dark ages which are already upon us.”

 he continued showing the dialectical passion of a Trotskyist, occasionally launching into what one colleague called “MacIntyrades.”

 All were guilty of “emotivism” — the belief that humanity was essentially a collection of autonomous individuals who selected their own principles based on inner thoughts or feelings.

This starting point, Mr. MacIntyre argued, could lead only to eternal, unresolvable disagreement. He went so far as to suggest that every tradition of modern politics had come to “exhaustion,” and he rejected many essential tools of modern moral philosophy: Thomas Hobbes’s social contract, John Locke’s natural rights, Jeremy Bentham’s moral consequences and Isaiah Berlin’s pluralism.

M The Tanner Lectures, Tanner Lecture Library
MacIntyre, Alasdair	Truthfulness, Lies, and Moral Philosophers: What Can We Learn from Mill and Kant?	Princeton	1994-95	Duke University