Chapter 27 The

Nature of Virtues
Alasdair MacIntyre
Introduction to Ethics Phil 118
Professor Douglas Olena
 The Nature of Virtues

• Read pg 277 first paragraph

• Different Virtues

• Different and Incompatible Theories of Virtues

• There is no Single Core Conception of Virtues

• MacIntyre lists differences between five rival systems of virtue:

• Homeric, Aristotelian, New Testament, Jane Austin and Benjamin

Franklin.
 The Nature of Virtues

• 278 “We have therefore accumulated a startling number of

differences and incompatibilities in the five stated and implied
accounts of the virtues.”

• “If different writers in different times and places, but all within the
history of Western culture, include such different sets and types of
items in their lists, what grounds have we for supposing that they do
indeed aspire to list items of one and the same kind, that there is
any shared concept at all?
 The Nature of Virtues

• 280 “The question can therefore can now be posed directly: are we
or are we not able to disentangle from these rival and various claims
a unitary core concept of the virtues of which we can give a more
compelling account than any of the other accounts so far?

• 280, 281This will require three accounts:

1. A background account of what I shall call a practice

2. An account of the narrative order of a single human life

3. An account of what constitutes a moral tradition

 A Practice

• 281 “By a ‘practice’ I am going to mean any coherent and complex

form of socially established cooperative human activity through
which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the
course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are
appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with
the result that human powers to achieve excellence and human
conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically
extended.”

• Holy Smoke!
 A Practice
• 281 “By a ‘practice’ I am going to mean any coherent and complex
form of socially established cooperative human activity

• through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in

the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence

• which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of
activity,

• with the result that human powers to achieve excellence and human
conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically
extended.”

• Not much better!

 A Virtue, A Practice
• 283 “A virtue is an acquired human quality the possession and
exercise of which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which
are internal to practices and the lack of which effectively prevents
us from achieving any such goods.”

• “Its goods can only be achieved by subordinating ourselves within

the practice in our relationship to other practitioners.”

• Clearly he intends us to think that practice is not a solo affair. It

requires a community of practitioners.

• 284 “Every practice requires a certain kind of relationship between

those who participate in it.”
 An Example: Justice

• 284 “Justice requires that we treat others in respect of merit or desert

according to uniform and impersonal standards: to depart from the
standards of justice in some particular instance defines our
relationship with the relevant person as in some way special or
distinctive.”

• 284, 285 “Practices then might flourish in societies with very

different codes; what they could not do is flourish in societies in
which the virtues were not valued.”
 More on Practice
• 285 There are two important contrasts to note:

• “A practice… is never a set of technical skills, even when

directed towards some unified purpose and even if the exercise
of those skills can on occasion be valued or enjoyed for their
own sake.” The technical skills serve goods and ends which are
extended by them. The history of the practice and the goals it
serves are changed by relation to one another. The practitioners
enter a practice in midstream, are transformed and transform the
practice.

• 285, 286 Practices must not be confused with institutions.

Practices live in institutions and are always in dynamic tension to
prevent their internal goods from being made to serve the
institution’s external goods. “Without justice, courage, and
truthfulness, practices could not resist the corrupting power of
institutions.
 Narrative of a Life
• 290 “What is the place of the values in the larger arena of human
life?”

• MacIntyre asks, “What would a human being lack who lacked the
virtues?”

• He answers, “His own life viewed as a whole would perhaps be

defective.” Three things characterize the defect:

• It would be pervaded… by too many conflicts and too much

arbitrariness.”

• “Without an overriding conception of the telos of a whole human

life, conceived as a unity, our conception of certain individual
virtues has to remain partial and incomplete.”
 The Virtuous Man

• The last thing which marks MacIntyre’s account of what constitutes

a moral life:

• 291 “There is at least one virtue recognized by the tradition

which cannot be specified at all except with reference to the
wholeness of a human life—the virtue of integrity or constancy.
‘Purity of heart,’ said Kierkegaard, ‘is to will one thing.’ This
notion of singleness of purpose in a whole life can have no
application unless that of the whole life does.”