Alasdair MacIntyre: Life & Legacy

On May 21, the Scottish-born philosopher, academic, and virtue ethicist Alasdair MacIntyre died at 96. His prolific academic career began in the United Kingdom, then continued in the United States starting in 1969. From 1985 onward, he made his scholarly perch at the University of Notre Dame. In such works as his landmark 1981 text After Virtue, he argued that the modern world had severed itself from sources of meaning and morality; he devoted his life to attempting a reconnection. That life took him from Marxism to Catholicism to a wide-ranging critique of what he called liberalism, which he considered the individualist obsession of modernity. We have invited some friends to provide an assessment of MacIntyre’s legacy.

— Jack Butler, submissions editor, National Review Online

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On May 21, the Scottish-born philosopher, academic, and virtue ethicist Alasdair MacIntyre died at 96. His prolific academic career began in the United Kingdom, then continued in the United States starting in 1969. From 1985 onward, he made his scholarly perch at the University of Notre Dame. In such works as his landmark 1981 text After Virtue, he argued that the modern world had severed itself from sources of meaning and morality; he devoted his life to attempting a reconnection. That life took him from Marxism to Catholicism to a wide-ranging critique of what he called liberalism, which he considered the individualist obsession of modernity. We have invited some friends to provide an assessment of MacIntyre’s legacy.

— Jack Butler, submissions editor, National Review Online