Reading Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue by Christopher Stephen Lutz

by Christopher Stephen Lutz

After Virtue is a watershed in MacIntyre's career. It follows his emergence from Marxism, but draws on Marxist sources and arguments. It precedes his move to Thomism, but already draws on Augustine and Aquinas. Because of its watershed nature, it has gained a wide readership in various fields but it treats a variety of issues in ways that are unfamiliar either to Marxists schooled in the social sciences or to Thomists schooled in medieval metaphysics.  

Reading Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue provides a commentary that will be accessible to students, valuable to scholars, and useful to teachers. Students will find help to navigate the two main arguments of After Virtue, to understand its interpretation of history, and to engage its proposal for a form of ethics and politics that returns to the tradition of the virtues. Scholars will find the book useful as a general guide to MacIntyre's ethics. Teachers will find a book that can help to direct their students' reading and keep classroom discussions focused on the book's central concerns.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Education

Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Dr. Lutz is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology in Indiana, where he teaches ethics and the history of philosophy.

He is a founding member of the International Society for MacIntyrean Enquiry (ISME), and hosted its second annual conference at Saint Meinrad in 2008. He also serves on the Executive Council of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.

Reviews

[Daniel Joachim · Rating 5 out of 5]

An invaluable guide to After Virtue, from a thorough scholar of MacIntyre, that manages to contextualize MacIntyre's arguments, and brings the 1980 book in conversation with our day and age.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A helpful companion when reading AV.