45 Years ‘After Virtue’

Philosophy As If It Were Literature

When asked whether he ever read any novels, the English philosopher Gilbert Ryle wryly quipped, “Yes, all six, every year.” His allusion was to the oeuvre of Jane Austen, which consists of six completed novels. (Sanditon, her seventh, remained unfinished at the time of Austen’s death.)

My fourth reading of Alasdair MacIntyre’s seminal book After Virtue (1981) felt very different from all the other times. From 2006 (when I first encountered the book) till this past week, I had, I suppose, regarded After Virtue as a work of philosophy, one that resoundingly repudiates the Enlightenment project while defending the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition of virtue ethics. I saw it also as a call to “the Benedict option,” an invitation to rejuvenate religious life by living in a local community oriented toward a shared telos. Of course, it is a work of philosophy—and a magisterial one at that—but it is also, I’ve come to feel, a work of literature. Let me elaborate on this claim by spelling out the implicit story that I believe MacIntyre is telling.

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You can read the rest of the essay on my Substack.