There have been four stages in the
development of my opinion of Alasdair MacIntyre. Perhaps some preliminary
stages might be inferred, but they are secondary to the discussion. These four
stages, essentially three stages which are then synthesized into one, are all
unique responses to some of his condescending tendencies, and each grows
logically out of its predecessor, as a counterargument.
1.
MacIntyre the Impersonal Ideologue, or the Idea Person.
What one notices most peculiarly about
MacIntyre is his tendency to put down matters of personal preference and taste.
This immediately creates our first impression of him: that of the Idea Man who
is NOT a conventional “people person”. It is, of course, possible to be BOTH
Idea Person AND People Person, yet this balance is seldom achieved, and
MacIntyre drifts to the former extreme. When we think of “people people”, we
are accustomed to agreeable socialites who might very well harbor deep-seated
feelings of cynicism and insecurity, but who routinely gloss over those
feelings with charm and tact. These people “love people” and love to be around
people, quite openly and shamelessly, drawing energy and wisdom from
interaction. They busy themselves with the careful study of human motivations,
often manipulating social situations in their own favour or the interest of
their friends. They put ample thought into their appearance and presentation,
leaving little to chance in the observation of fashion, though they do their
level best to hide their own efforts and to appear “naturally” and “relatably”
appealing.
By contrast, the Idea Person tends to be
the outcast and the critic. More common among introverts than extraverts, the
Idea Person usually appears on Life’s Stage (if not only behind the scenes) as
a stubborn, cloistered intellectual who swiftly tires of public life and wishes
to make the World conform to a conceptual scheme which he alone deems Noble.
MacIntyre might not be a villain in a
film from the Red Scare, but his tendency to criticize the human will does not portray
him as a party animal either. Meticulous and efficient, he is the “sort of guy
you go to” when you need a job done right, but he’s “not the sort of guy” you
invite to a party or to have a drink. He’s like a robot: efficient but impersonal,
processing data with self-assured detachment, reacting to every hint of
personal bias as an Operating System responds to a bug or virus.
This is the first impression, and it is
very immature. Yet what follows becomes even more nebulous and problematic.
2. MacIntyre the Apologist for
Conformity.
The Second Impression one receives of
MacIntyre is that of the Noble Conformist. It becomes clear, as one begins to
acquire a feeling for MacIntyre’s humour, that the man LIKES people, after all;
his aversion to individuality is not, in fact, misanthropy. MacIntyre sees the
Good in People and wants what both he AND they consider to be Best for themselves
and for each other; he simply is possessed of the unyielding notion that such
goods can only be acquired by avenue of the Social System. Everything which we
enjoy as Individuals emanates, to his mind, from what we have achieved in
Groups. Conformism is not a curse but Grace Itself, for when people can be
persuaded to get along, good things happen, and evil arises only from one of
two sources: the absence of Social Order and the perversion of Social Order by
its departure from the Traditions of Previous Social Orders. On that note, an
Individual can rob himself and his fellows of an opportunity for the Good Life
by deviating from those Traditions, irrespective of whether or not the Society as
a Whole commits the same mistake. Conformism is not an end in and of itself,
least of all a source of intrinsic comfort for the outgoing hedonist, but rather
a means towards a teleological end: the possibility for Individuals to coexist
harmoniously and, therefore, nobly and happily. This implies that, in order for
Human Life to be Humane, certain inhuman instincts which, as Camus had put it,
even human beings secrete, must be suppressed if not eradicated completely. The
man consumed by his own jealousy can have no genuine, trusting interpersonal
relationships; the woman who gambles compulsively can enjoy no financial
security. The simple fact that we exist does not render us good people; we
require the support of our fellows in order to prosper, and this support is a
human need, perhaps the only universal one. MacIntyre is no longer just “the
guy you go to” when you need a JOB done; he’s your advocate whenever you tire
of the World. All about us, we are surrounded by drug pushers, libertines,
liars, manipulators, bullies, and traitors; MacIntyre is the sort of friend you
turn to when you need to KNOW that they are wrong and you want proof to expose
them. Conformism gets a bad reputation, though it is the perfect adversary to
chaotic, self-serving evil; MacIntyre redeems conformism, stripping it of its
Fascist associations and turning it towards Universal Good. Yet this evolved
conception of the man is even more dangerous than the primary insult.
3. MacIntyre the Bully.
The moment of disillusion comes in when MacIntyre’s
condescension apparently “goes too far”. This moment may come for different
readers and listeners at different times; for some, it may never come at all.
At this stage, whether it is under the sobriety and lucidity of the University
classroom or the intoxication of late-night, drunken reading, MacIntyre is
unmasked as an apparent bully. One gets the surreal impression of a Scot who
attends the sidelines of a rugby game and boos the players for every fumble. This
man does not simply partake in condescension towards individuals; he ENJOYS it.
His drive to conform and to belong is not simply a matter of principle and
intellectual stance, but a profound personal bias, the likes of which he
projects upon the perpetual scapegoat and easy target of the outcast. This political
caricature of MacIntyre NEEDS appraisal to fuel his temperamentally insecure
ego; devoid of genuine conscience and self-knowledge, he surrenders both in
favour of the pack, and the perpetuation of his feeble ego must by necessity
thrive off the denigration of all natural deviants. This observation is, of
course, overwhelmed by the extreme attention to detail with which he covers his
tracks, yet the simple appearance of this specter in the night does not invalidate
but consolidates the conclusions. MacIntyre is not a people person but a pathological
narcissist, and his contempt for other narcissists is purely competitive in
nature. His conformism is only on your side so long as the mob he represents
does not see “through” you, and it is every bit as much informed by subjective
bias and loneliness as is the fault he finds within you, to the jeers of his
peers.
This caricature, while it is absurd and
insulting, completes the preliminary picture this reader envisages of MacIntyre
the Man, and it is crucial towards the final incarnation of his image, owing
both to its verifiable AND its radically biased and subjective, projected
contents. The reason for this is that one can identify very similar fears and
projections in the objective assay of him.
4. MacIntyre the Champion and Enabler.
The Final Image of MacIntyre is a whole
greater than the sum of its parts, which is of course an ironic thing to say,
since he at once lags behind and surpasses his hero Aristotle, his savior and
his downfall. One must assume that MacIntyre thinks highly of Aristotle, even
to the point that a son defends his Father. Were a passionate student of Nietzsche
to accuse Aristotle of prejudicial bullying, we ought not to be surprised to
find MacIntyre acting in Aristotle’s defence, both from the Witness Stand and as
his Legal Counsel. Were MacIntyre himself accused of the same crime, he is
likely to defend himself just as piously, for the piety of his Ideals and his
belief in them is authentic, and such Ideals do not sit well with the
suggestion that exercises of authority are arbitrary at heart.
Ultimately, MacIntyre is revealed, even
in his eighties, to be a child. An introvert by nature, he must be assumed to
have endured some “fair share” of bullying at the hands of extraverts. Not one
to fight back without a strong arm, he is likely to have internalized the
abuse, disowning his own virtue and projecting it upon the Extraverted World.
Aristotle became his extraverted role
model. A sort of monolithic Father Figure, Aristotle, as well as all Platonic
conceptions of him after Plato, has come to embody the archetypal extravert;
even Jung used him as his prime example in the coinage of the dichotomy of
types. To MacIntyre, Aristotle is the Platonic Ideal (in fact: an introvert’s projection)
of what an outgoing, social man SHOULD be. Aristotle’s Athens, as it was, as
Aristotle wanted it to be, as it had been and as Aristotle has presumed it to
have been, is a sort of Heaven on Earth for introverted intellectuals such as
MacIntyre. There, the philosopher is no longer left out, cast in an inferior
position; in that Athens of Virtue, young MacIntyre is allowed to thrive, and
all bullying is simply the society’s contempt for those wayward, abusive
deviants whom MacIntyre still resents in secrecy. MacIntyre’s thesis is that
those deviants have come to power and turned the language of Great Men like Aristotle
and Christ to their own purposes. If Aristotle is ever to be redeemed in the
public eye, it will be only by matching their perverse transgression (the memory
of the abuses) with an equal and opposite Authority (the projection upon idols).
MacIntyre’s lifelong academic career
allows him to inhabit a minute vestige of that lost, Atlantean world which
Aristotle had inhabited, either in flesh or thought. MacIntyre is the
introverted child who sought, unsuccessfully, through no fault of his own save
sheer naïveté, to earn the approval of his bullies, who had
come to comprise a ruling class. Failing to win their support whilst feeling
inwardly entitled to it, (rightfully, for it was only HIS virtue to begin with
that he had projected upon his “superiors”) MacIntyre came to the only natural
conclusion: that Aristotle, the Good Man, had fallen.
Why Aristotle? Only because Aristotle IS
what extraverts OUGHT to be. His approval represents a harmonious synthesis
between people of his kind and people like MacIntyre. He is that mythological
guide who leads MacIntyre through Hades. Conversely, MacIntyre’s spiritual role
model, Christ, represents the Introvert’s Homecoming. It is quite obvious that
Academia, amounting to little more than a slice of old Athens, cannot welcome
Christ as the Church does; hence MacIntyre’s University lectures and texts tend
towards Aristotle whilst his musings in the Catholic Church concern the
rejection of Christ. Just as Aristotle was cast out, so was Jesus of Nazareth.
The former represents that Authority which the introvert envies when he finds
it in extraverts, though he finds it only because he wishes to, desperately. Yet
Jesus is simply the other side: if Aristotle represents all that extraverts
ought to be as leaders in secular life, Jesus represents all which MacIntyre
aspires to be as a leader in Spiritual Life. The synthesis of Athens and
Jerusalem, though easy enough for the iconoclastic, Aquarian Shestov, remains a
pipe dream for the dour Capricorn named Alasdair MacIntyre, and it is the very
fantastic nature of this dream which renders it an escape.
Inwardly yet transparently, MacIntyre
cherishes the thought that Aristotle COULD, in some Platonic Heaven, share wine
with Jesus, despite those doctrinal differences which, in the Eyes of an
Omniscient Logos, amount to little more than differences of personality and
temperament. On Earth, these doctrinal differences are absolutely crucial, for
it is only by observing their strictures and doing as the Romans (or, in this
case, the Greeks and Judeo-Christians) do that one manages to lead a life worthy
of Salvation. Alasdair MacIntyre’s rationalism is nothing more than an epic
poem on behalf of Introversion: the Quest for Acceptance into Society.
Yet this Society must always, by its
nature, fail, since we know from Nietzsche (though MacIntyre continues to deny
this with contempt and grudging respect) that the Strong are in fact totally
arbitrary in their rulemaking. Aristotle’s immunity to rules is not simply the
exaltation of excellence, but rather the exercise of will. Aristotle was never
himself an Aristotelian, and those who follow in his footsteps can never amount
to him in terms of charisma. MacIntyre knows this, but he must recognize, upon
some level, that Aristotle’s path is not for MacIntyre to walk. Aristotle was
simply a philosophical bully: Plato’s problem pupil. Deep down, MacIntyre must recognize that he
can never BECOME Aristotle, because Aristotle is NOT the Great Man he was once
remembered to be. The idols which extraverted leaders erect are often simply in
their own image, and the victims of their followers tend towards their idolatry.
Only once every thousand years or so does an introvert come along like Jesus or
Nietzsche to decimate the idols. Most introverts, unfortunately, bow low before
the ghosts of their childhood oppressors, becoming spokespeople for the tyranny
of the Strong, perpetually disappointed by the Platonic Ideal once put into
practice.
To what can we ascribe this tragedy?
Only to this: that the men who fashion the idols have none of their own.
Aristotle was a bully and a teacher of bullies; his teachers were the True Idealists,
as in MacIntyre, and because most people enable bullies, “Society” is always
broken. MacIntyre cannot recreate it, since only aggression forges
civilizations. Do not be misled by the Rationalism Alasdair MacIntyre has gleaned
from the Analytic Philosophical School. Yes: it can be proven that Aristotle
has fallen. Yet why him? Even MacIntyre himself admits that the choice of idol
is arbitrary, and his defence, though resounding and poignant, is not
altogether convincing by the same stringent standards which MacIntyre assigns
for himself and all of Humankind. Aristotle himself will never live up to
MacIntyre’s standards, simply because that virtue which Aristotle ostensibly
possessed and professed was only ever projected upon him by the Platonic minds
of sensitive introverts. He is to MacIntyre as the Pharaoh was to Yugi Mutou or,
worse yet, as Heisenberg was to Walter White.
[({R.G.)}]
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