Whose Justice? Which Rationality?

by Alasdair MacIntyre

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0268019428
• ISBN13: 9780268019426
• Release Date: March 1988
• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Length: 422 Pages
• Weight: 1.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A major work of contemporary philosophy

This is a review of _Whose Justice? Which Rationality?_ by Alasdair MacIntyre.This is a very challenging book to read, but also one that will deepen your thinking about the world, whether you agree with it or not. We largely take it for granted that (1) people disagree significantly about a wide range of issues related to ethics, and that (2) people do not agree about enough standards of rationality to resolve these ethical disagreements. MacIntyre puts this by saying that "logical incompatibility and incommensurability" both obtain (p. 351). What conclusion should we draw from these facts? One common response is relativism, which is roughly the view that the truth or falsity of a claim depends on the perspective from which it is evaluated. However, MacIntyre argues against relativism based on a brilliant reinterpretation of several major Western philosophical traditions.The Western Englightenment (of which Descartes is paradigmatic), rejected appeals to tradition, canonical texts and authority, and attempted to put in their place the "appeal to principles undeniable by any rational person," and hence independent of culture, history, etc. "Yet both the thinkers of the Enlightenment and their successors proved unable to agree as to what precisely those principles were which could be found undeniable by all rational persons" (p. 6). Since the Enlightenment, most Western thinkers have either (1) continued to search for principles that are universally acceptable to all minimally rational humans (and continued to fail in this quest), or (2) given up on the quest for universal principles of reason, but -- paradoxically -- continued to assume the Enlightenment prejudice that any rational justification would have to be universal, ahistorical, and acultural. MacIntyre suggests that neither approach has learned the lesson of the failure of the Enlightenment project, which is that any rational justification has to be parochial, historical and in a particular cultural context. Since rational justification must be historical, the bearers of justification are not "theories" in the abstract, but embodied traditions. MacIntyre examines four sample traditions in this book (although he admits there are many more): the Aristotelian-Thomistic, the Augustinean, and those of the "Scottish Enlightenment" and modern liberalism. Traditions like these can undergo "epistemological crises": situations in which a tradition, by its own standards, increasingly discloses "new inadequacies, hitherto unrecognized incoherences, and new problems for the solution of which there seem to be insufficient or no resources within the established fabric of belief" (p. 362). A tradition may find a way to survive such a crisis (as Thomas Aquinas helped Christianity to do by synthesizing Augustineanism and Aristotelianism), but it may also fail. And because the possibility of failure is there, relativism is false: a tradition can come to see that its claims are false even by i

Almost more trouble than it was worth

Why in the world did MacIntyre feel that he needed to provide a sequel to After Virtue, his magnum opus? Well, as he states in his introduction, his moral system demands a fuller account of rationality and justice. He gives a detailed historical exposition of justice and rationality in Homeric Greece, Plato, and Aristotle then moving on to Augustine, Aquinas, and the Scottish Enlightenment. The retelling of each of these viewpoints' ideas on justice and rationality are lucid and breathtaking at times if you can stand MacIntyre's rather wordy writing style. So how, in his mind, does his account of rationality and justice 'win?' It seems automatic to seek some purely objective standard by which to weigh the arguments of each of these specific systems, but as MacIntyre points out, the mere idea of a purely objective standard is deeply embedded in the Enlightenment tradition: a tradition which MacIntyre showed in "After Virtue" to be seriously flawed. Instead, the system first must be internally coherent but second, and more importantly, must overcome epistimological crises that it faces. A certain system gets into trouble if a rival system can better resolve the epistimological crises facing it. MacIntyre thinks that the Aristotelian tradition, especially as embedded in Thomism, 'wins' by this account. While the sense of victory is not as obvious as in After Virtue, I think that MacIntyre has a coherent and reasonably compelling argument in his favor.This book can be read in isolation, but is best read after reading After Virtue, giving you a clearer idea of the problem that MacIntyre is addressing.

Whose JusticeMWhich Rationality?

I,m not claer on the concepts of justice on this book of Macintyre .I need someone help me the clearity.Please!

a pivotal work

In another cogent examination of contemporary moral philosophy, Alasdair MacIntyre examines moral philosophies from the perspective of their bases. He points out the critical need to remember which frame of thought we are speaking in.