Invisible Adjunct

Traditional humanism ... as in classical humanism?

If so, IA, seems to me it's turned into a war of all against all. Though it seems we're all equally matched...

"Traditional humanism ... as in classical humanism?"

Not just classical, but Christian too, though very much based on the classical. I have in mind a whole series of related assumptions and arguments concerning ethics, politics and philosophy which characterized western moral and political thought up to the Enlightenment. Eg: the idea that there is a summum bonum; morality as based on reason rather than the passions; ethics as the pursuit of excellence in the practice of the virtues and based on a positive notion of the common good rather than ethics as the orchestration/disciplining of private interests and passions and based on a more negative do-no-harm principle; politics rather than economics as the realm in which human beings most fully realize their humanity (at least in a secular sense). I am obviously making broad (over)-generalizations. I pretty much agree with Macintyre's account of what changed and when, though I don't agree with his valuation of pre-modern versus modern.

Never understood Alasdair Macintyre.

He seemed to be arguing that it was a *really bad* thing for a society to lack a moral consensus--that it was much better to have an agreed-upon moral framework (even a false framework that held, say, that women were all Daughters of Eve and sources of evil) than to have no consensus moral view of the universe. He then seemed to jump to saying that the need for society-wide moral consensus automatically ruled out moral and philosophical theories that let any form of skepticism in through the door.

Thus all forms of liberal and other inquiry-based approaches to morality and philosophy were verboten. All that was left was (i) Trotskyism, and (ii) Medieval Roman Catholicism, as those were the only two moral philosophies that were properly innoculated against skepticism. You had to choose one--Trotsky or St. Benedict--and silence the still small inner voice that asks, "But is [Trotsky, the Pope] right?"

At that point my brain exploded. So I am not sure that I have given an accurate account of Macintyre...

Brad DeLong

"At that point my brain exploded. So I am not sure that I have given an accurate account of Macintyre..."

Years of Catholic schooling gave my brain the chance to build up defenses against just such an explosion.

Your account sounds accurate enough to me. And I think it's basically nutty to think we could return to an Aristotelian telos. It's not possible and in any case, I would argue, not at all desirable. His "bad guys" (eg., Hutcheson, Hume, Smith) are my "good guys:" which is to say, I'm all for the Enlightenment.

But I like Macintyre because he takes it back to the source. Most complaints against feminism and multiculturalism seem shallow by comparison.

...Macintyre does not begin with the late 1960s, of course, but rather understands his tradition well enough to locate what he calls "the breakdown" of unity and coherence in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment...

Granted that the late Enlightenment figures really did a number on the unity and coherence of the doctrines they inherited, but they didn't reject unity and coherence as such. On that level, they're still speaking the language of the Scholastics (and of MacIntyre).

And I can't tell whether locating the various "turns" in the past thirty years is your move or Rée's, but wouldn't most people say that they began at least as far back as Nietzsche, if not with Kant's Critique of Judgement?

"And I can't tell whether locating the various "turns" in the past thirty years is your move or Rée's, but wouldn't most people say that they began at least as far back as Nietzsche, if not with Kant's Critique of Judgement?"

My point was precisely that this goes back a lot further -- ie, back to the Enlightenment. Ree is talking about a number of specific "turns" over the past thiry years, but arguing that the basic move (scepticism about absolutes, recognition of the contingency of value) goes back to the ancients.

Re: unity and coherence: Enlightenment thinkers tried to salvage/maintain unity and coherence even as they undermined it. Were they successful? the answer depends on one's perspective. Macintyre says No, they were not.

My point was precisely that this goes back a lot further -- ie, back to the Enlightenment

If by "this" you mean the undermining of unity and coherence as it was when the Enlightenment thinkers came along, then we agree. If by "this" you mean the rejection of unity and coherence per se that I identified with the "turns," then I think we disagree.

IA
I think that your democratic account of the broad movement of postmodernism is right----it takes on the inherited culture of everyday life.

It comes out cultural studies in Australia and though a form of lit crit gone popular culture it still has some philosophical oomp due to its roots in Derrida and Focuault.

MacIntyre should be taken seriously. He argues that postivism in the early 20yth century left us without a moral language. Emotivism (good is what I like) collapses good and bad into subjective feeling. So we need to recover a moral language. It is very relevant today because of lot of modern utilitarian economics is diehard postivist.

It is a reworking of Nietzsche's nihilism (the historical process whereby our highest values devalue themselves)---- despite MacIntyre saying that Nietszche stands at the cross roads and needs to be confronted.

PS IA to pick up on an earlier debate re the Enlightenment you should write 'Scottish Enlightenment.' Then we would have some idea of what it is that you are trying to defend--something very different to the Enlightenment project of a Bentham or neo-liberalism.

Yes, but it also has a whiff of elitist Straussian secret knowledge about it. After all, you can hardly tell people that the reason they should believe in and use the moral language of St. Benedict or Trotsky is not that their doctrines are true but that it is important to have a common moral language. People must think it *true* that Christ died for our sins or that we sacrifice for the future utopia of a classless society in order for these doctrines to function as the keystones of authoritative moral languages, no?

So Macintyre's view seems to be that it is good for there to be an outer group that believes in the teachings of St. Benedict (or Trotsky?) and an inner group that understands that a common moral language is important, and thus that skepticist or Enlightenment challenges to the authority of the moral discourse should not be bandied about--not because such challenges are false, but because they would undermine the moral order, and it is good to have a moral order (never mind whether it is true or false).

This makes me think that I should stop reading. After all, there are enough people out there trying to talk to me who are in good faith engaged in some Habermas-like speech situation: I can read only a trivial proportion of those who are writing in good faith. Why should I read someone whose basic project is to tell Noble Lies, especially since once someone announces that they are telling one Noble Lie, it's hard to figure out what they *really* believe at all...

"After all, there are enough people out there trying to talk to me who are in good faith engaged in some Habermas-like speech situation..."

I'd like to think so. But lately I have to wonder: where are they?

You can get to hung up on the secretmens business of the Straussians. The two level discourse--- saying one thing to the public and meaning something different to the initiated--- is quite common in liberal society.

Think of politicians, managers sacking staff; economists and clergy. Take economists----double talk all the time in public policy. Their politics and ethics is represented as value-free science to the public; but not to their political masters to whom they are giving policy advice.

Doubt if many economists in Australia would have heard of Strauss let alone engaged in a close reading of his key texts.

>>Take economists----double talk all the time in public policy. Their politics and ethics is represented as value-free science to the public; but not to their political masters to whom they are giving policy advice.

Gary, I don't think economists or clergy tell Noble Lies. You may reject their conceptual frameworks, and argue against the descriptive/analytic value of their models and explanations, but that is rather different from suggesting that they don't believe what they are saying when they make public pronouncements and that they are engaged in a deliberate policy of deception.

Is it not a bit unfair to Macintyre to suggest that his brand of morality flowing from traditions/practices necessarily sinks him into relativism--as I take Brad to suggest? Certainly he has spent alot of energy defending himself against that charge..although I've not figured out whether his defense is successful...