Narrative, Truth, and Relativism in the Ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre

272 Pages·2010·1.16 MB·English

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

Narrative, Truth, and Relativism in the Ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty of the

School of Philosophy

Of The Catholic University of America

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

©

Copyright

All Rights Reserved

By

Brian M. McAdam

Washington, D.C.

2011
Narrative, Truth, and Relativism in the Ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre

Brian M. McAdam, Ph.D.

Director: V. Bradley Lewis, Ph.D.

Alasdair MacIntyre advances a narrative approach to moral philosophy in which
the truth in ethics is sought by means of narrating the stories of contending moral
traditions. Critics often argue that MacIntyre‘s narrative approach to moral philosophy
entails relativism because it denies objective moral truth, fails to provide a way to judge
between the truth-claims of rival traditions, and/or implies that one‘s commitment to a
particular tradition must be arbitrarily determined. This dissertation argues that
MacIntyre‘s moral philosophy is not subject to the charges of relativism urged against it
by critics.
Chapter One presents some of the less controversial ways in which MacIntyre
makes use of narrative. He sees narrative as the approach to moral philosophy through
which action, human life, and the pursuit of the good receive their intelligibility.
Considering these less problematic applications of narrative helps to show what
MacIntyre means by narrative. Doing so also provides a foil to his more controversial
use of narrative as it pertains to moral enquiry.
Each of the remaining three chapters considers one of the aforementioned charges
of relativism brought against MacIntyre‘s moral philosophy. Chapter Two considers the
―perspectivist challenge,‖ the claim that MacIntyre‘s philosophy neither aspires to nor
allows for objective moral truth. This dissertation argues that MacIntyre overcomes the
perspectivist challenge by advancing a robust, realist account of truth.
Chapter Three considers the ―relativist challenge,‖ the criticism that MacIntyre
fails to provide a way to adjudicate between the truth-claims of rival traditions. By virtue
of his theory of how one tradition can defeat another in respect to their truth-claims, this
dissertation argues that he overcomes the relativist challenge.
Chapter Four evaluates the ―particularist challenge,‖ the claim that MacIntyre‘s
moral philosophy is open to relativism by not being able to provide a person outside all
moral traditions with reason to commit to one tradition rather than another. While
MacIntyre has not yet published a response to the particularist challenge, this dissertation
argues that his particularism compels him to reject the notion of those outside all
traditions. By rejecting that notion, he can successfully overcome the particularist
challenge as well.
This dissertation by Brian Michael McAdam fulfills the dissertation requirement for the
doctoral degree in philosophy approved by V. Bradley Lewis, Ph.D., as Director, and by
Robert Sokolowski, Ph.D. and Angela McKay Knobel, Ph.D. as Readers.

V. Bradley Lewis, Ph.D., Director

Robert Sokolowski, Ph.D., Reader

Angela McKay Knobel, Ph.D., Reader

ii
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam

and

For Sarah

iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

CHAPTER ONE
Narrative and Action, the Unity of a Human Life, the Good . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1. Narrative and Human Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2. Narrative and the Unity of a Human Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3. Narrative and the Good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

CHAPTER TWO
Tradition, Rationality, the Perspectivist Challenge, and Truth . . . . . . . . . . 98
1. Tradition: Community, Argument, Continuities, and Narrative . . . . . . . . . . 99
2. Tradition as Bearer of Rationality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
3. The Perspectivist Challenge and Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

CHAPTER THREE
The Relativist Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
1. The Relativist Challenge: Critical Suspicions and Allegations . . . . . . . . . 165
2. MacIntyre‘s Response to the Relativist Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

CHAPTER FOUR
Particularism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
1. Particularism and Universal Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
2. The Particularist Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am very grateful to Dr. V. Bradley Lewis for his careful guidance as the director
of this dissertation. I am also grateful to Msgr. Robert Sokolowski and to Dr. Angela
McKay Knobel for serving as readers.
My studies at The Catholic University of America were made affordable by virtue
of the St. Vincent Pallotti Fellowship. I am very grateful to the Pallottines for their
financial support.
I am grateful to Fr. Matthew Monnig, SJ, for introducing me to philosophy and to
Dr. Peter Kreeft at Boston College for moving me to love it.
For the inspiration to pursue MacIntyre‘s thought I have Dr. Timothy Gray of the
Augustine Institute to thank. My friends and coworkers at the Augustine Institute and at
FOCUS, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, constitute the type of
community that MacIntyre argues is central to the intellectual and moral life. I am
grateful to them for allowing me to learn firsthand and to practice the virtues about which
I read and write.
I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my parents, Gary and Claudia McAdam, whose
support of my studies has been constant throughout the years. As models of practical
wisdom, they have helped me on countless occasions to discern the end and to reach it.
I am especially grateful to my wife, Sarah, for her unflagging patience and for the
many sacrifices she made to enable me to complete this dissertation. May her sacrifices
bear fruit for us by the grace of God, to whom I am above all most grateful.
v
Introduction
Alasdair MacIntyre concludes his 1999 article ―Moral Pluralism without Moral
Relativism‖ with these words:
We can recognize and give respect to a variety of points of view, so
remaining moral pluralists, without becoming moral relativists. So I
conclude; but am I in fact entitled to this conclusion? It is important to
note that in at least three respects my argument is incomplete. First, I have
relied upon, but never spelled out, a particular understanding of the nature
of truth, one that is very much at odds with some currently influential
theories of truth. Secondly, my account of what I have called the ethics of
enquiry is far too brief to be adequate. And thirdly, I have not considered
what reply to my argument an insightful relativist might make. So that
what I have presented is perhaps a gesture towards an argument, rather
than argument, not a conclusion to which I am as yet entitled, but a
conclusion to which I might become entitled.1

On the strength of the incomplete arguments of ―Moral Pluralism without Moral
Relativism‖ alone MacIntyre questions the extent to which he can justifiably hold ―moral
pluralism without moral relativism.‖ Is he, however, entitled to this conclusion based on
arguments he makes elsewhere?
MacIntyre‘s desire to reject moral relativism while nevertheless arguing for moral
pluralism, moral particularism, and the importance of historical context in moral enquiry

1 Alasdair MacIntyre, ―Moral Pluralism without Moral Relativism,‖ Proceedings
of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 1 (1999): 7–8.
1
2
runs throughout his writings from at least the publication of A Short History of Ethics in
1966 until the present.2 Within his corpus he does articulate a theory of truth, provide a
fuller account of the ethics of enquiry, and consider arguments that a relativist might
bring against his position. And it is clear that on the strength of the arguments of his
entire corpus MacIntyre thinks he is entitled to reject moral relativism while arguing for
moral pluralism, moral particularism, and the fundamental importance of historical
context in moral enquiry. In the Prologue to the Third Edition of After Virtue, for
instance, he writes:
What historical enquiry discloses is the situatedness of all enquiry, the
extent to which what are taken to be the standards of truth and of rational
justification in the contexts of practice vary from one time and place to
another. If one adds to that disclosure, as I have done, a denial that there
are available to any rational agent whatsoever standards of truth and of
rational justification such that appeal to them could be sufficient to resolve
fundamental moral, scientific, or metaphysical disputes in a conclusive
way, then it may seem that an accusation of relativism has been
invited. . . . In the Postscript to the Second Edition of After Virtue I
already sketched an answer to this charge, and I developed that answer
further in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Yet the charge is still
repeated, so let me once again identify what it is that enables, indeed
requires me to reject relativism.3

2 Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge,
1998); 1st ed., 1966. See, for instance, p. 91 where MacIntyre writes, ―If the kind of
evaluative question we can raise about ourselves and our actions depends upon the kind
of social structure of which we are part and the consequent range of possibilities for the
descriptions of ourselves and others, does this not entail that there are no evaluative truths
about ‗men,‘ about human life as such? Are we not doomed to historical and social
relativism? The answer to this is complex.‖
3 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 3rd ed. (Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), xii; 1st ed., 1981.
3
While in Chapters 2–4 I will consider what, on MacIntyre‘s view, requires him to
reject relativism, at the moment I wish merely to draw attention to the issue of relativism
in his thought. MacIntyre wants to reject relativism, and he thinks that he has in fact
successfully rejected it. Yet critics continue to bring against his thought the charge of
relativism. Thomas D‘Andrea notes, ―That, despite his intent, MacIntyre cannot, or at
least does not in his stated views, escape relativism is a frequent criticism, particularly by
those sympathetic to his general project.‖4
MacIntyre‘s ―general project‖ is to provide a narrative approach to moral
philosophy in which the truth in moral enquiry is sought by means of narrating the stories
of contending moral traditions. He writes, ―Of every particular enquiry there is a
narrative to be written, and being able to understand that enquiry is inseparable from
being able to identify and follow that narrative.‖5
He thinks that the narrative approach to moral philosophy is the way to overcome
what he regards as a crisis in moral philosophy. He cites as evidence of this crisis what
he considers to be the shrill, interminable, unresolved, and seemingly irresolvable
character of modern moral debate. He writes, ―It is a central feature of contemporary
moral debates that they are unsettlable and interminable. . . . Because no argument can

4 Thomas D. D‘Andrea, Tradition, Rationality, and Virtue: The Thought of
Alasdair MacIntyre (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 403.
5 Alasdair MacIntyre, ―First Principles, Final Ends, and Contemporary
Philosophical Issues,‖ in The Tasks of Philosophy: Selected Essays, Volume 1,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 168. First published as First
Principles, Final Ends and Contemporary Philosophical Issues (Milwaukee, WI:
Marquette University Press, 1990). The version in The Tasks of Philosophy is revised
and expanded.