After After Virtue: an Unflinching Critique of MacIntyre.
(Written upon Completing my Second Reading of After Virtue, though not the Nineteenth Chapter, for Obvious Reasons.)
MacIntyre’s crystallized perfection cracks under the hammers and sickles of those Marxist apologists and Nietzschean dreamers whom MacIntyre so translucently despises, but the bulk of the crumbling deconstruction of After Virtue is performed by MacIntyre himself, once his devotion to his dreams of public accountability and his eager resistance to any sort of Nietzschean or Sartrean detachment from Public Life compel him to “defend” his work with a far duller instrument than he employed for its construction: a useful tool repurposed into a weak weapon.
Hardly, if even, three years
following the publication of the First Edition in the United States MacIntyre
caved into publishing an ominous Nineteenth Chapter wherein, for the first time
over the course of his comedic history of moral thought, the playwright himself
appears onstage as a caricature, breaking the fourth wall of historicity in
order to address the hecklers in his audience. He hardly breaches the top of
the third page of this addendum without reducing himself to a stock character
at the turn of the leaf: “Morality which is no particular society’s morality is
to be found nowhere,” quoth the Learned Scot of Notre Dame, continuing to cite some
of his most iconic examples as one-liners: “There was
the-morality-of-fourth-century-Athens, there were the-moralities-of-thirteenth-century-Western-Europe,
there are numerous such moralities, but where ever was or is morality as
such?”
Yet even in writing that previous
sentence I am forced to confront the fact that MacIntyre is no longer a Scot,
nor has he been one for about half a century, and while the shelter of American
Academia might allow this “something of an intellectual nomad” (quite probably
his own words) to escape the evils of ethnic profiling, his own ethical aims do
not, though they DO allow him the privilege of “doing as the Romans do” within
the safe confines of an Institution that is every bit as much a product of
liberal Individualism as is Nietzsche, if not far more so.
MacIntyre’s central sin is a
contradiction which Aristotle would most probably have laughed at. On the one
hand, MacIntyre claims that morality is entirely topical, particular to groups
and times, devoid of that universality which thinkers as diverse as Kant and
Kierkegaard equated it with, and to be recognized within the context of a plurality.
On the other hand, (perhaps not the shaking hand) MacIntyre rejects pluralism,
especially with regards to Individuals as Rational Beings.
Yet how does a “nomad” manage to
avoid becoming an Ubermensch? Clearly, the chief advantage to leading a
nomadic lifestyle within the “fallen” modern world is in that one needs NOT
simply to adapt to whatever culture one finds one’s self within, thereby
sacrificing that romanticized “continuity of narrative” which comprises After
Virtue’s most beautifully crafted chapter, but rather one can avail one’s
self of a variety of perspectives and use Reason to decide among them which
path to take. Constancy is not lost but gained in such a postmodern wilderness,
though the temptation towards inconstancy remains, more tempting than ever
before, though more threatening and fearful to the wary and experienced. In
offering us the long-lost boon of moral objectivity, how does MacIntyre justify
his own subjective biases, biases which by his own definitions MUST be intrinsic
to his lifestyle as a transatlantic immigrant? (Perhaps I should note that, in
this respect, I feel for him, but only as a character foil.) How does a
seasoned nomad “settle down” into the mandala-shaped enclosure of the modern
Academic city-state?
Apparently, it is by seeking to
subvert the cornucopia of admittedly irreconcilable cultures (“admittedly” by
the author’s own admission) and subcultures of the Present Age to the
authoritarian rule of one Greek alpha male, severing all ties with competing
intellectual traditions, (Camus is mentioned only once in After Virtue, as
an unflattering example, and he does NOT appear within the Index of the Third
Edition, twenty-six years later; Deleuze, Derrida, and Foucault do not appear
at all.) and casually commenting, with boyish naiveté, that it is not virtue
but bureaucracy which inspires despotism.
Yet who is better suited to contend
with bureaucracy: Nietzsche or MacIntyre? One defines himself entirely by his
role as does a chivalrous knight; the other uses medieval writs for wastepaper.
Camus achieves more by “charm”, Jung more by “intuition”, and Kierkegaard more
by sweeping generalizations than does the bookish, cozy Alasdair MacIntyre, at
least with respect to not only appealing to the moral conscience but empowering
it in persons. Deleuze, even in rejecting personhood as more than a
product of multiplicities, is far more thorough in his investigation of
cultures, mythology, and the effects of both upon the internal psyche (thanks
in large part, we might presume, to his co-author Felix Guattari) than the Scottish-American
historian who idealizes most the Greek and Scandinavian myths, (pity that he
and Nietzsche never met to drink to that; intellectual history might have
turned out differently) so sequestering himself to those cultures which were
directly touched by Aristotelian meddling (at times: an Alexandrian Conquest tantamount
at least to Manifest Destiny, though MacIntyre seems to prefer the former to
the latter, having tried the fruits of both) that his prologue still lists “Chinese
and Japanese” as though it were “also” an alien category to be distinguished
from “English, Danish, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian,
and Turkish”.
Is such myopia not OBVIOUSLY the
consequence of a pluralism which rejects all universal claims? Is the infantile
idolatry of Aristotle via Jesus not TRANSPARENTLY a reaction to one’s own
temperamental insecurities? When the natural conformist, sworn enemy of the
Nietzschean Superman, can no longer feel safe leading a nomadic lifestyle, for
his home is devoid of patriotism and continuity, what better course of action
for him remains but to take up refuge in an academic convent, ally himself with
Catholicism out of utility, (especially to appear “consistent” to his students,
thereby preserving status and security,) to preach Aristotle to a world tired
of it, awaiting the return of the Saviour whom academia will recognize? If
Nietzsche cannot be credited for anything else, is it not for arming Jung with
the language with which to expose such neuroses?
Who among us has not sinned in this
way? Men look to powerful figures like Aristotle or privileged princes like Christ
to save them when they find themselves in new and hostile territory. Failing to
adapt, we seek to adapt our environment to ourselves; failing to adapt our
environment, we seek someone else to adapt it FOR us. One needn’t even consider
Nietzsche’s primary project: the rejection of Socrates, without whom Aristotle would
have amounted to little. The last line of After Virtue even seeks to
place the author in the position of a cleric working towards the recognition of
this Saviour; tired of waiting for Godot, the embodiment of hope whose “absence
says more than his presence” (as does the wandering Taoist sage whom Watts
loved and who surely inspired Nietzsche’s Ubermensch) MacIntyre resolves
himself to waiting for St. Benedict. Yet apparently St. Benedict is already
among us, and it is MacIntyre himself!! Yet this is just humble enough to stop
short of Nietzschean narcissism, for MacIntyre is not herein analogous to Christ;
that is Aristotle.
[({Dm.R.G.)}]
