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A Marxist Critique Of Alasdair Macintyre's After Virtue, Colin S. Cavell
A Marxist Critique Of Alasdair Macintyre's After Virtue, Colin S. Cavell
University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations
Alasdair Macintyre asserts in After Virtue that contemporary moral discourse is only arbitrary assertion of the will. Appeals to reasoned arguments have been replaced by expressions of preference, attitude and feeling-- in short, by "emotivism." Macintyre locates this moral breakdown in the Enlightenment philosophers' failed attempt to replace Aristotelian teleology with a rational justification for morality.
Macintyre's analysis fails because he does not show whose interests are served through the assertion of arbitrary supposed will or whose interests were served when "objective" standard of the Middle the Ages prevailed. He does not acknowledge the preeminent role the material relations of …