Abstract
MacIntyre suggests that we are confronted with competing understandings of what it means to be a “philosopher.” The philosopher as technical specialist is akin to the character of the manager. MacIntyre describes this character not only to diagnose, but also to arouse. His purpose is to awaken his readers to the hollowness of this sort of philosopher, pointing to the gap between this character’s activities in the professional context as compared with the everyday life of this kind of philosopher. He thereby hopes to dispose his reader to turn away from the conception of the philosopher as technical specialist. MacIntyre draws upon the character of the “plain person” to encourage a transformed conception of the philosopher, from professional specialist to seeker of understanding.
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Notes
A. MacIntyre (2000) “Theories of Natural Law in the Culture of Advanced Modernity,” in E. B. McLean (ed.) Common Truths: New Perspectives on Natural Law (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute).
A. MacIntyre (1958) “On not Misrepresenting Philosophy,” Universities and Left Review, 4, 72.
A. MacIntyre (1979c) “Why Is the Search for the Foundations of Ethics so Frustrating?,” Hastings Center Report, 9, 4, 22.
S. Soames (2003) Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 2, 463; quoted by MacIntyre in God, Philosophy. Universities, 17–18.
A. MacIntyre (1990a), 136, 139, and 175; MacIntyre gives a detailed description of the “everyday plain person” in A. MacIntyre (1992) “Plain Persons and Moral Philosophy: Rules, Virtues and Goods,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 66, 1, 3–7.
This character is prefigured in the “ordinary agent” in A. MacIntyre (1977b) “Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative, and the Philosophy of Science,” The Monist, 60, 4, 453–472. After his 1992 essay, MacIntyre makes reference to the “plain person” frequently. For example, see Volumes 1 and 2 of MacIntyre (2006a), especially Chapters 6, 7, and 9 in Volume 1, The Tasks of Philosophy, and Chapters 3, 7, and 10 in Volume 2, Ethics and Politics.
A. MacIntyre (2006b) Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue (London: Rowman and Littlefield), vii.
A. MacIntyre (2011) God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition (London: Rowman and Littlefield), 10.
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© 2013 Gregory R. Beabout
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Beabout, G.R. (2013). Transforming the Character of the Moral Philosopher. In: The Character of the Manager. Humanism in Business Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304063_12
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