MacIntyre’s Original Model Adjusted to Take Account of Patiency and Dissent

Abstract

In the approach to knowledge I am putting forward, I have looked at how ‘the many’ (Aristotle 1999: Bk 1 ch. 4 ss 2) can be authoritative. I have also considered Kant, who is an Enlightenment thinker whose approach is rejected by MacIntyre. I have questioned that rejection. I have spelt out various ways by which MacIntyre’s model of pre-modern knowledge can be adjusted to take account of the knowledge of the many. To spell out further the model of knowledge which can be put forward as an alternative to Bracken’s call for a post-modern psychiatry, I need to adjust his model for patiency and dissent. (This model of knowledge will be a modification of MacIntyre’s approach to knowledge which has the features, set out in his essay ‘First Principles’, of moving towards a final end and being an enterprise in which many souls are engaged together.)