Comments on the Objections

Anthony gives the following replies:

A couple of quick comments on these objections: on the first one, MacIntyre is objecting to a social science that models itself on the natural sciences, and therefore thinks it can come up with straightforward predictions of what will happen in society.  MacIntyre certainly thinks his own Aristotelian approach (and his brand of philosophical history - though that is really more like Hegel than Aristotle!) enables us to better understand what is going on in society, but he doesn't claim to provide scientific-style predictions of what will happen.  Virtue theory is normative rather than attempting to be predictive (in the way most orthodox social science is); it aims to tell us what we should do, but (notoriously) it does not follow from the fact that we should do something that we will.  So I don't think MacIntyre is undermined by his own argument here.

As for how we should think about democracy, individualism etc if we are convinced by MacIntyre; in some ways he is an unreconstructed Marxist, and does I think, take modern liberal democratic theory as ideology in the Marxist sense - a nice disguise for the reality of an alienated society.  But he certainly does want any kind of authoritarian/totalitarian politics either.  Hence his recommendation that we withdraw from the whole spectrum of standard political options.  But it is very hard to work out what he ultimately wants to see, or how if at all he thinks it could happen.  But no doubt about it; it is a radical stance!

Anthony