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Ethics and Politics: Selected Essays, Volume 2

by MacIntyre, Alasdair (2006)

Abstract

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.

Key Passage

What philosophical enquiry achieves, on the view that I am ascribing to Aristotle, is an outline sketch of what it would be for any rational animal to achieve its specific good, constructing by dialectical argument an account of what eudaimonia cannot consist in, that is, in such lives as the life of moneymaking, the life of sensual pleasure, or the life for which political honor is a sufficient end, and what it must be, a life of activities that give expression to the several moral and intellectual virtues, a life of friendships and of engagement in political activity, a life that moves towards a perfected understanding of that life and of its place in the universe. (p.35)

Keywords

Macintyre, Aristotle, Aquinas, Telos, Marxism, Moral Disagreement, Moral Philosophy, Ethics, Free Markets, Enlightenment

Themes

Ethics and Politics, 2 Vols

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