Fran O’Rourke's What Happened in and to Moral Philosophy in the Twentieth Century?

(Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2013. 512 pp. ISBN: 13: 978-0-268-03737-6.)

Fran O’Rourke does a wonderful work for this edition of another excellent anthology to honor the thoughts and person of Alasdair MacIntyre. What Happened in and to Moral Philosophy in the Twentieth Century? presents penetrating and diverse studies on the legacy that Alasdsair MacIntyre has to philosophy. The anthology features eighteen chapters with an introduction composed by the editor and an epilogue penned by MacIntyre himself. The chapters, except for Chapter 1 which features MacIntyre’s own paper, are distributed into three parts: Part I is about ‘Reading Alasdair MacIntyre,’ Part II is on ‘Complementary and Competing Traditions,’ and Part III is about ‘Thematic Analyses.’

Those who ‘read’ Alasdair MacIntyre in Chapters two to six (Part I) are themselves established philosophers of their own right: John Haldane, Joseph Dunne, Kelvin Knight, Arthur Madigan, SJ, and Hans Fink. Their papers have emphasized a variety of directions in MacIntyre's work. Haldane has concentrated on the relevance of MacIntyre's thoughts and the latter’s contribution in keeping philosophy humanistic; Dunne examines more closely one of MacIntyre's most recent work, Dependent Rational Animal; Knight talks about MacIntyre’s ‘revisionary Aristotelianism’; Madigan provides insights on the identity of MacIntyre's projects - particularly his relations with liberal Aristotelians, the Thomists and the Marxists - and the future endeavors that have been inspired by MacIntyre’s thoughts; Fink also speaks of MacIntyre’s connection with a marginalized Danish moral philosopher, Knud Ejler Løgstrup, and how has MacIntyre’s attention to the thoughts of Løgstrup helped us realize that prestige in academic philosophy is oftentimes a matter of having quality commentators to one’s projects.

Chapters seven to twelve (Part II) feature the papers on MacIntyre’s engagements with traditions. James Edwin Mahon talks about MacIntyre’s engagement with emotivism. This topic has already been prominent in MacIntyre’s After Virtue and even earlier works; Stephen Mulhall speaks of MacIntyre’s dialogue with the thoughts of Stevenson and Nietzsche; Raymond Geuss offers some pointers on how Marxism could help us grapple with the ethos of the twentieth century - and down to our present century - which is dominated by a Nietzschean perspective that is characterized by a ‘complex of anarchic beliefs and anomic modes of living.’ In this second part of the book, one can also read the contribution of James McEvoy who speaks about the parallelism in the projects of MacIntyre, and two Dominican authors, Leonard Boyle, OP and Servais Pincaers, OP. Steven Long also offers his thoughts on how the modern attack on metaphysics and the teleology of natural law (those attacks which he describes as the ‘perfect storm’) has provided the impetus to improve reflections on this particular tradition so that its contribution can now hardly be dismissed despite its having been opposed by the children of modernism and postmodernism. The chapter by Richard Kearney concludes Part II, and here Kearney discusses the issue on the limits of forgiveness borrowing largely from the thoughts of Ricoeur and Derrida. Rarely however does Kearney makes explicit reference to MacIntyre and on ho how does this question on forgiveness bear with the ‘MacIntyrean’ project.

Part III is about thematic analyses and presents such penetrating studies as Fran O’Rourke’s engagement with evolutionary theories, specifically on their implications to ethics. Owen Flanagan moreover examines the dominant narrative that governs our conceptions of justice and deserts. Jonathan Ree writes an article on ‘History, Fetishism, and Moral Change.’ Elijah Millgram and William Desmond have respectively authored the articles on ‘Relativism, Coherence, and the Problems of Philosophy’ and ‘Ethics and the Evil of Being.’ The last article for Part III is from Gerard Casey who writes on ‘The Inescapability of Ethics,’ which argues both for the fundamental incoherence of determinism and irrationalism which he believes to be a natural consequence to the fact about the inescapability of ethics.

The opening and closing pieces of this anthology are aptly taken from MacIntyre’s own writings. This anthology has anyway originated from a Conference at University College Dublin in 2009 which is specifically directed to a discussion on MacIntyre’s thoughts and contribution to philosophy. MacIntyre wrote the first chapter of which he gave the title, “On Having Survived the Academic Moral Philosophy of the Twentieth Century.” Here, MacIntyre has described how his Aristotelian position placed him within the ongoing debates in contemporary moral philosophy. He also pointed out that his own conception of moral philosophy has placed him at odds both with the dominant standpoint in contemporary moral philosophy and the established analytic understanding on how a philosophical inquiry should proceed. He particularly laments against the present divide between academic moral philosophy and the actual conduct of moral agents; where he even suggests that relevant experiences in practice, like experience at farms, construction sites, laboratories and studios, and even in political struggles and military engagements, should be required of those who aspire to teach moral philosophy. In assessing the possible directions that a moral philosopher should take, MacIntyre advises one’s keenness on the thoughts of both Marx and Aquinas. He moreover calls for one’s prudent and vigilant immersions in the academic centers who could make one conversant with the ongoing developments in the area of moral philosophy.

The last paper in the collection is MacIntyre’s epilogue. In this piece, he asks the question: What next? MacIntyre has called us to take a look at ourselves, not only as philosophers but also as moral agents, for we need to understand the meaning of having been able to ‘reason well’ or ‘badly’ in our practical lives. Hence, he is inviting his readers to read and reread the insights rendered especially on Aquinas’ account of practical rationality. To do this, he encourages his readers to enter into a particular genre in writing philosophy – one that features the lives and decisions of outstanding moral agents. If moral philosophy finds its locus also in the practical lives of actual moral agents, then philosophical writing could well attend also to the lives of actual moral agents whose relevant life-narratives are meant to tell us a lesson. In his epilogue, he mentions the names of Vasily Grossman, C.L.R. James and Denis Faul. With the limited pages that he has for the concluding part of his epilogue, he paid homage to the lives and works of these three personalities – something which we have already seen him do when he wrote a book on Edith Stein. Perhaps, this is an important invitation that must attract us. The best forms of ethics are perhaps those that have been effectively lived, and a closer attention to such lives can be worthy of our time.

What Happened in and to Moral Philosophy in the Twentieth Century?is a remarkable assembly of insightful minds. This is a work that cannot be ignored by those who wish to learn more on moral philosophy especially for one who is interested with the thoughts of Alasdair MacIntyre. We thank the editor, the authors - especially the honoree, Alasdair MacIntyre - and all those who were instrumental in making this work a reality.