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The Inadequacy of the Practice Conception of Virtue Alone

The Inadequacy of the Practice Conception of Virtue Alone. 1) Life would be pervaded by “ too many conflicts and too much arbitrariness.” 2) An adequate conception of some particular virtues requires “an overriding conception of the telos of a whole human life, conceived as a unity.”

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The Inadequacy of the Practice Conception of Virtue Alone

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  1. The Inadequacy of the Practice Conception of Virtue Alone • 1) Life would be pervaded by “too many conflicts and too much arbitrariness.” • 2) An adequate conception of some particular virtues requires “an overriding conception of the telos of a whole human life, conceived as a unity.” • 3) The virtue of integrity can only be specified with reference to the unity of an entire life. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 3d ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 201, 202.

  2. Obstacles in Finding Unity in Modern Lives • Social Obstacles • Life divided into periods, e.g., youth, old age • And into Spheres, domestic, work, religion, play • Philosophical Obstacles • Think atomistically about actions—analytic Philosophy • Roles separated from self --existentialism

  3. Narrative Unity Embedded in Ordinary Life • Necessary for rendering human actions intelligible • Intelligibility of human action is relative to intentions and settings • Necessary for understanding personal identity

  4. In what does the unity of an individual life consist? “Its unity is the unity of a narrative embodied in a single life. To ask ‘What is the good for me?’ is to ask how best I might live out that unity and bring it to completion. . .The unity of a human life is the unity of a narrative quest. . . A quest for what?” Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 3d ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 218-19.

  5. Two features of the medieval conception of a quest 1) “without some at least partly determinate conception of the final telos there could not be any beginning to a quest.” 2) “it is not at all that of a search for something already adequately characterized, as miners search for gold or geologists for oil.” Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 3d ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 219.

  6. Virtues and Narrative Unity “The virtues therefore are to be understood as those dispositions which will not only sustain practices and enable us to achieve the goods internal to practices, but which will also sustain us in the relevant kind of quest for the good, by enabling us to overcome the harms, dangers, temptations, and distractions which we encounter, and which will furnish us with increasing self-knowledge and increasing knowledge of the good.” Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 3d ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 219.

  7. What is the good life for man? “. . . The good life for man is the life spent in seeking for the good life for man, and the virtues necessary for the seeking are those which will enable us to understand what more and what else the good life for man is.” Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 3d ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 219.

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