New Conventions for Old 185of character formation and moral habituation within particular communities and
traditions. Action presupposes some deliberate choice, which is, in turn, embed-
ded in and nurtured by a way of life or ethos. In this premodern mode of thought,
MacIntyre sees the core of the virtues. 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’ (MacIntyre 1981: 178). Virtue enables us to attain ends internal to
practices. But virtues cannot be delineated apart from human relationships. Thus
Homeric, Athenian, and Christian virtues become coherent in particular historical
and communal settings.
For MacIntyre, the classical Aristotelian tradition was gradually undermined
between the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. He offers a genealogy of this pro-
cess. The final denouement of the tradition was underpinned by arguments from
what MacIntyre clumsily calls the ‘Enlightenment project’ (see Schmidt 2000). It sep-
arated reason and value from tradition and community. He takes one of the main
preoccupations of the Enlightenment project to discover new secular foundations
for morality, outside of Aristotelianism and Christianity. Kant is often seen as the
greatest expositor of this trend. However, for MacIntyre, the whole modern enter-
prise has failed. The really significant figure of modernity is not Kant, but Nietzsche.
Nietzsche embodies the key expression of the modern era, representing the collapse
into nihilism and emotivism (MacIntyre 1981: 111). In Nietzsche, there is nothing to
morality but the expression of my will and what my will creates. Nietzsche’s unwit-
ting spawn are taken to be Sartrean existentialism and analytically based emotivism.
Thus, the Enlightenment, liberal individualism, Nietzsche, atheistic existentialism,
the emotivist self, are all subtly linked in MacIntyre’s mind. The Nietzschean scheme,
per se, is not a critical alternative to liberalism and the Enlightenment; it is part of it.
Hardly surprisingly, the pivotal chapter of MacIntyre’s bookAfter Virtue(1981) is
significantly titled ‘Nietzsche or Aristotle’. For MacIntyre, the choice is stark: either
one adheres to the ‘Enlightenment project’ and modern liberalism and ends up with
Nietzsche and emotivism, or, one regards the Enlightenment project as misconceived.
If we regard it as misconceived, we turn against the modern age and must revindicate
Aristotelianism. For MacIntyre, there is no ‘third way’—as suggested by Salkever.
There are no other alternatives. It is between Nietzsche and Aristotle (MacIntyre
1981: 112). MacIntyre’s own sympathies lie with revindicating Aristotelianism. He
places this choice before us in deeply apocalyptic almost Straussian terms, suggesting
that our civilization has reached a turning point. For MacIntyre, ‘we ought also to
conclude that for some time now we too have reached the turning point. What matters
at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and
the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the dark ages which are already
upon us...We are waiting not for a Godot, but another— doubtless very different—
St Benedict’ (MacIntyre 1981: 263). Thus, monastic rule and neo-Aristotelianism
beckon to us.
Neo-Aristotelianism is thus revindicated by MacIntyre in three senses. First, it is
needed to restore intelligibility and rationality to morality. This point has resonances