Alasdair MacIntyre - Plain Persons and Moral Philosophy

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory"

It focuses upon the interplay between several general questions asked and addressed by moral theory and corresponding particular questions asked and answered by ordinary people, within the scope and course of their lives.

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You can find MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory" here - https://amzn.to/3KUbXVf

Alasdair MacIntyre, Plain Persons - Universal and Particular Moral Questions - Sadler's Lectures

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory"

It focuses upon two important moral distinctions that MacIntyre argues are  involved in developing "a capacity to become reflective about norms and goals".

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You can find MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory" here - https://amzn.to/3KUbXVf

Alasdair MacIntyre, Plain Persons - Two Key Moral Distinctions - Sadler's Lectures

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory"

It focuses upon his contention that plain persons are often what he calls "proto-Aristotelians" in their broad commitments embodying moral theory, rather than simply neutral blank slates. MacIntyre writes:

"[T]he plain person is funda­mentally a proto-Aristotelian. What is the force of 'fundamentally 'here? What it conveys can be expressed in three claims, first that every human being either lives out her or his life in a narrative form which is structured in terms of a telos, of virtues and of rules in an Aristotelian mode or has disrupted that narrative by committing her or himself to some other way of life, which is best understood as an alternative designed to avoid or escape from an Aristotelian mode of life, so that the lives of those who understand themselves, explicitly or much more probably implicitly, in terms set by Kant or Reid or Sidgwick or Sartre, are still informed by this rejected alternative. 

Secondly, I have told the story of the decline and fall of the plain person as the narrative of a single life. But the story could have been told, and I have told it elsewhere (in After Virtue), as a claim about the narrative history of a set of successive periods in West.em culture from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. This partial mirroring of the fate of individuals in the history of the larger social order and of the fate of that larger order in the narratives of individual lives testifies to the inseparability of the two stories. 

Thirdly, as these first two claims imply, I am also committed to holding that every human being is potentially a fully-fledged and not merely a proto-Aristotelian and that the frustration of that potentiality is among his or her morally important characteristics. We should therefore expect to find, within those who have not been allowed to develop, or have not themselves allowed their lives to develop, an Aristotelian form, a crucial and ineliminable tension between that in them which is and that which is not, Aristotelian. The standard modem anti-Aristotelian self will be a particular kind of divided self, exhibiting that complexity so characteristic of and so prized by modernity."
 

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You can find MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory" here - https://amzn.to/3KUbXVf

Alasdair MacIntyre, Plain Persons - Plain Persons as Proto-Aristotelians - Sadler's Lectures

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory"

It focuses upon a generalized narrative that MacIntyre calls "the story of the decline and fall of the plain person", with four main "episodes".
1. The protagonist strives to answer the question "what is my good", but doesn't develop a temperateness needed toward less than supreme goods
2. A "radical discrepancy develops between rules needed for pursuit of the good and the multiplicity of goods
3. The discrepancy gets resolved in one of two incompatible ways. Either rules take priority or goods do. The protagonist learns that they cannot avoid taking sides
4. The protagonist discovers that the major issues at stake cannot be rationally resolved

MacIntyre also maintains that this is not just a story of individuals but of our moral culture from the 16th-20th centuries, as set out in his book After Virtue

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If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM

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You can find MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory" here - https://amzn.to/3KUbXVf

Alasdair MacIntyre, Plain Persons - Narratives of Moral Decline - Sadler's Lectures

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory" It focuses upon the relationships outlined between Goods, Rules, and Virtues -- as well as practices, inclinations, and the natural law -- in that text.

To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler

If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM

You can find over 3,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler

You can find MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory" here - https://amzn.to/3KUbXVf

Alasdair MacIntyre, Plain Persons - Goods, Rules, and Virtues - Sadler's Lectures

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory"

It focuses upon the extent to which what MacIntyre calls "plain persons" need to be or become moral philosophers. He writes:

"We can now say something more not only about how much of a moral
philosopher the plain person has to be, but also about what kind of a
moral philosopher the plain person has to be and how this may differ
from situation to situation. The plain person needs as much of a theory
as will enable her or him to identify what the significant alternatives
are which now confront her or him, and to understand why and how it
was in the past that she or he did or did not make mistakes in acting in
one way rather than another. That need may not be met, not only if the
plain person is insufficiently a theorist, but also if the theory which is
made available to her or him, even if true and adequate qua theory, is
stated in too much abstraction from the specificities and particularities
of her or his historical and autobiographical situation."

To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler

If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM

You can find over 3,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler

You can find MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory" here - https://amzn.to/3KUbXVf

Alasdair MacIntyre, Plain Persons -  How Far Should Plain Persons Be Moral Philosophers?

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory"

It focuses upon MacIntyre's discussion of moral development and a person's life understood as a narrative

To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler

If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM

You can find over 3,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler

You can find MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory" here - https://amzn.to/3KUbXVf

Alasdair MacIntyre, Plain Persons - Narrative and Moral Development - Sadler's Lectures

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