PHIL103: Moral and Political Philosophy

MacIntyre converted to Roman Catholicism in the early 1980s, and now does his work against the background of what he calls an "Augustinian Thomist approach to moral philosophy". In an interview with Prospect, MacIntyre explains that his conversion to Catholicism occurred in his fifties as a "result of being convinced of Thomism while attempting to disabuse his students of its authenticity". Also, in his book Whose Justice, Which Rationality? there is a section towards the end that is perhaps autobiographical when he explains how one is chosen by a tradition and may reflect his own conversion to Roman Catholicism. Parallel recent developments in the methods of philosophical research, which carry resonances with MacIntyre's take on Thomism, are witnessed with a modern approach to Avicennism (the historical legacies that were built upon the philosophy of Avicenna or Ibn Sina) as embodied in the works of Nader El-Bizri in connection with Islam, even though the orientation is phenomenological instead of being analytic, and the focus is on ontology rather than moral philosophy.

Fuller accounts of MacIntyre's view of the relationship between philosophy and religion in general and Thomism and Catholicism in particular can be found in his essays "Philosophy recalled to its tasks" and "Truth as a good" (both found in the collection The Tasks of Philosophy) as well as in the survey of the Catholic philosophical tradition he gives in God, Philosophy and Universities.