Alasdair MacIntyre

Read this article on Alasdair MacIntyre. MacIntyre has been influential in pointing to a retrieval of virtue ethics. What is the central question of virtue ethics as described in the article? What is one of the major points of his book, After Virtue, concerning the failure of the Enlightenment?

Biography

MacIntyre was born on 12 January 1929 in Glasgow, to Eneas and Greta (Chalmers) MacIntyre. He was educated at Queen Mary College, London, and has a Master of Arts degree from the University of Manchester and from the University of Oxford. He began his teaching career in 1951 at Manchester. He married Ann Peri with whom he had two daughters, Jean and Toni. He taught at the University of Leeds, the University of Essex and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, before moving to the US in around 1969. MacIntyre has been something of an intellectual nomad, having taught at many universities in the US. He has held the following positions:

  • Professor of History of Ideas, Brandeis University (1969 or 1970),
  • Dean of the College of Arts and Professor of Philosophy, Boston University (1972),
  • Henry Luce Professor, Wellesley College (1980),
  • W. Alton Jones Professor, Vanderbilt University (1982),
  • Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame (1985),
  • Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University (1985),
  • Visiting scholar, Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University (1988),
  • McMahon-Hank Professor of Philosophy, Notre Dame (1989), and
  • Arts & Sciences Professor of Philosophy, Duke University (1995–1997).

He has also been a visiting professor at Princeton University, and is a former president of the American Philosophical Association. In 2010, he was awarded the Aquinas Medal by the American Catholic Philosophical Association. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 1985), the British Academy (1994), the Royal Irish Academy (1999), and the American Philosophical Society (2005).

From 2000 he was the Rev. John A. O'Brien Senior Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy (emeritus since 2010) at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, US. He is also professor emerit and emeritus at Duke University. in July 2010 became senior research fellow at London Metropolitan University's Centre for Contemporary Aristotelian Studies in Ethics and Politics. Since his retirement from active teaching in 2010, he remains the senior distinguished research fellow of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, where he retains an office. He continues to make public presentations, including an annual keynote as part of the Center for Ethics and Culture's Fall Conference.

He has been married three times. From 1953 to 1963 he was married to Ann Peri, with whom he had two daughters. From 1963 to 1977 he was married to former teacher and now poet Susan Willans, with whom he had a son and daughter. Since 1977 he has been married to philosopher Lynn Joy, who is also on the philosophy faculty at Notre Dame.