Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity

Alasdair MacIntyre explores some central philosophical political and moral claims of modernity and argues that a proper understanding of human goods requires a rejection of these claims. In a wide-ranging discussion he considers how normative and evaluative judgments are to be understood how desire and practical reasoning are to be characterized what it is to have adequate self-knowledge and what part narrative plays in our understanding of human lives. He asks further what it would be to understand the modern condition from a neo-Aristotelian or Thomistic perspective and argues that Thomistic Aristotelianism informed by Marx''s insights provides us with resources for constructing a contemporary politics and ethics which both enable and require us to act against modernity from within modernity. This rich and important book builds on and advances MacIntyre''s thinking in ethics and moral philosophy and will be of great interest to readers in both fields.