fragments of an attempted writing.
My new friend Billy sent me the link to this piece written by Alasdair MacIntyre for the NYT during the 2004 election cycle.  They declined to publish it.

He pointed my attention to one other MacIntyrian work which had previously escaped my attention - this book of and on MacIntrye's Marxist writings.  I will definitely have to get that one.  In the event you are curious, here is a review from the CPGB.

Here's also to hoping that one day I will find a cheap copy of this work, edited by E.P. Thompson and with a contribution by MacIntyre.

10 comments:

  1. The paragraph where he almost 100% agrees with Ron Paul (the one beginning with "The basic economic injustice of our society…") is a surprise (I would have expected him to be more in line with the "leftier" thoughts of Taylor); the fact that the growth in GDP has been near–exclusively for the banking class was a launching point for a significant section of Paul's speech at his alt–convention; he's mentioned the negative income tax before, noting that — at the very least — it would be needed because of the social reliance on SS/welfare today.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'd like to take a look at the first one. I tried reading the review you link to, but couldn't make it past this godawful bit: "The long-term influence of After virtue in the academy is towards the rehabilitation of violently conservative-Catholic versions of Thomism and, alongside these and as a result, the legitimation of ultra-conservative forms of political islamism and - from the Protestant camp - ‘creation science’ and ‘dominion theology’."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well he did commit heresy in their eyes...

      The review does give some indication as to why there was a New Left.

      Delete
    2. The part I can't take seriously is calling MacIntyre an "analytic philosopher". He's not a "continental", but he's not an analytic by any stretch of the imagination, either. If anything, he exists in a place similar to that nebulous place most historian–philosophers do.

      Delete
    3. They next time I teach a class on political Islam, I'll have to remember to start with MacIntyre's having legitimized it for us....

      Delete
  3. There's a book that I've been meaning to read that looks at the revolutionary implications of MacIntyre's post After Virtue writings: http://amzn.com/0268022259

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nice. I'll have to find out if any library in town has that one.

      Delete
    2. I haven't read it, but this review is a critical take. (I am a devoted reader of NDPR.)

      Delete
    3. What cartoonish remarks about Marx and Marxism.

      Delete
    4. "Consciousness proceeds being for MacIntyre..." Wouldn't that preclude both Marxism and Aristotelianism?

      But yeah, while there's a million interesting things one could say about the compatibility or incompatibility of Aristotle and Marx, that review didn't really say any of them....

      Delete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.