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Alasdair MacIntyre, Plain Persons - Narratives of Moral Decline - Sadler's Lectures
This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory" It focuses upon a generalized narrative that MacIntyre calls "the story of the decline and fall of the plain person", with four main "episodes". 1. The protagonist strives to answer the question "what is my good", but doesn't develop a temperateness needed toward less than supreme goods 2. A "radical discrepancy develops between rules needed for pursuit of the good and the multiplicity of goods 3. The discrepancy gets resolved in one of two incompatible ways. Either rules take priority or goods do. The protagonist learns that they cannot avoid taking sides 4. The protagonist discovers that the major issues at stake cannot be rationally resolved MacIntyre also maintains that this is not just a story of individuals but of our moral culture from the 16th-20th centuries, as set out in his book After Virtue To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 3,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler You can find MacIntyre's essay "Plain Persons and Moral Theory" here - https://amzn.to/3KUbXVf
Published on 10 months ago