Aristotelianism versus Communitarianism

2005 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelvin Knight
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Alasdair Macintyre ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Formal Institutions ◽  
Conservative Politics

AbstractAlasdair MacIntyre is an Aristotelian critic of communitarianism, which he understands to be committed to the politics of the capitalist and bureaucratic nation-state. The politics he proposes instead is based in the resistance to managerial institutions of what he calls ‘practices’, because these are schools of virtue. This shares little with the communitarianism of a Taylor or the Aristotelianism of a Gadamer. Although practices require formal institutions. MacIntyre opposes such conservative politics. Conventional accounts of a ‘liberal-communitarian debate’ in political philosophy face the dilemma that Alasdair MacIntyre, often identified as a paradigmatic communitarian, has consistently and emphatically repudiated this characterization. Although neo-Aristotelianism is sometimes seen as a philosophical warrant for communitarian politics, MacIntyre’s Aristotelianism is opposed to communitarianism. This paper explores the rationale of that opposition.

MacIntyre, Alasdair (1929–)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Thomas ◽  
Tom Angier
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Alasdair Macintyre ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Ethical Approach

Alasdair MacIntyre has contributed to the diverse fields of social, moral and political philosophy. He is one of the leading proponents of a virtue ethical approach in moral philosophy, part of a wider attempt to recover an Aristotelian conception of both morality and politics. His return to ancient and mediaeval sources has been powered by a critical indictment of the modern moral predicament, which MacIntyre regards as theoretically confused and practically fragmented; only a return to a tradition which synthesizes Aristotelian and Augustinian elements will restore rationality and intelligibility to contemporary moral and political life.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
GerShun Avilez
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
African American ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Black Nationalism ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Black Power Movement ◽  
Universal Negro Improvement Association ◽  
The 1960S

This introductory chapter provides a background of Black Nationalism. Black Nationalism is a political philosophy that has played an integral part in African American social thought from the nineteenth century forward. There are two main threads of this philosophical tradition: classical and modern. Classical Black Nationalism is a political framework guided primarily by concerns with the creation of a sovereign Black state and uplifting and “civilizing” the race. With regards to Black Nationalist thought in the twentieth century, two moments loom large: Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in the 1910s/1920s and the Black Power Movement in the 1960s/1970s. Modern Black Nationalism is characterized by two specific shifts away from the foundational ideas that governed the classical form. It departs from its predecessor in the general lack of an explicit emphasis on an independent Black nation-state. It also shifts attention to mass culture and Black working-class life.

The British Conservative Party in the Twentieth Century: from Beginning to End?

1999 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-287
Author(s):  
JOHN TURNER
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Historical Society ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Conservative Politics ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
History Of ◽  
Oxford University Press

Stuart Ball, The Conservative Party since 1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 205 pp., £40.00, ISBN 0-7190-4012-4.John Charmley, A History of Conservative Politics, 1900–1996 (London: Macmillan, 1996), 283 pp., £16.99, ISBN 0-333-56293-3.Alan Clark, The Tories: Conservatives and the Nation State 1922–1997 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998), 493 pp., £20.00, ISBN 0-297-81849-X.N. J. Crowson, Facing Fascism: The Conservative Party and the European Dictators 1935–1940 (London: Routledge, 1997), 270 pp., £20.00, ISBN 0-415-15315-8.Brendan Evans and Andrew Taylor, From Salisbury to Major: Continuity and Change in Conservative Politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 288 pp., £14.99, ISBN 0-7190-4291-7.Steven Ludlam and Martin J. Smith, Contemporary British Conservatism (London: Macmillan, 1996), 322 pp., £14.99, ISBN 0-333-62949-3.Philip Norton (ed.), The Conservative Party (London: Prentice Hall, 1996), 264 pp., £15.95, ISBN 0-13-374653-4.John Ramsden, An Appetite for Power: A History of the Conservative Party since 1830 (London: HarperCollins, 1998), 562 pp., £24.99, ISBN 0-002-55686-3.John Ramsden, The Age of Churchill and Eden 1940–1957 (London: Longman, 1995), 350 pp., £57.50, ISBN 0-582-50463–5.John Ramsden, The Winds of Change: Macmillan to Heath 1957–1975 (London: Longman, 1996), 485 pp., £70.00, ISBN 0-582-27570-9.Anthony Seldon (ed.), How Tory Governments Fall (London: Fontana, 1996), 510 pp., £7.99, ISBN 0-00-686366-3.Anthony Seldon and Stuart Ball (eds.), Conservative Century: The Conservative Party since 1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 842 pp., £20.00, ISBN 0-19-820238-5.Robert Self, The Austen Chamberlain Diary Letters: The Correspondence of Sir Austen Chamberlain with his sisters Hilda and Ida, 1916–1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Royal Historical Society, 1995), 548 pp., £40.00., ISBN 0-521-55157-9.

The Organization of Egypt: Inadequacies of a Nonpolitical Model for Nation-Building

1966 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Heaphey
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Group Action ◽  
Organization Theory ◽  
Party System ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Charismatic Leadership ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Good Case

The purpose of this article is to argue that the doctrine of rapid economic development coupled with organization theory is an inadequate basis for a nation-state. Our subject is Egypt, but we believe the analysis reaches beyond Egypt because the problem—the attempt to use organization theory with a doctrine of economic development as a political philosophy—can be found in a number of other countries; in a sense it can be found in most countries today. Egypt is a good case because salient aspects of the problem are writ large there and articulated with unusual clarity. While Egypt is in some ways unique, it shares with other countries certain characteristics that are basic to the analysis pursued in this article: underdevelopment, scarce resources, lack of enthusiasm for development on the part of the population, a “Western” and a “Communist” set of models to observe, a knowledge of modern organization theory, charismatic leadership, a one-party system (to the extent that there is a party in operation at all), and a lack of structural pluralism and group action.

MacIntyre, Aquinas, and Politics

2004 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-383 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas S. Hibbs
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Alasdair Macintyre ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
The Common ◽  
Political Realities

In recent years, Alasdair MacIntyre has supplemented his longstanding critique of the liberal nation-state with a defense, grounded largely in an interpretation of the writings of Aquinas, of the politics of the common good as embodied exclusively in local communities. Even after MacIntyre's account of local politics has been clarified and distinguished from the distortions of some of his critics, there remain weaknesses, chief among which are that the local communities he promotes are pre- or subpolitical and that his hasty dismissal of modern politics involves the sort of caricature of existing political realities alien to Aquinas's prudential assessment of regimes.

Toward an Ethics of Organizations

1999 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 619-638 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Phillips ◽  
Joshua D. Margolis
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Organizational Ethics ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Individual

Abstract:The organization is importantly different from both the nation-state and the individual and hence needs its own ethical models and theories, distinct from political and moral theory. To develop a case for organizational ethics, this paper advances arguments in three directions. First, it highlights the growing role of organizations and their distinctive attributes. Second, it illuminates the incongruities between organizations and moral and political philosophy. Third, it takes these incongruities, as well as organizations’ distinctive attributes, as a starting point for suggesting an agenda for an ethics of organizations.

scholarly journals Community Agency and Islamic Education in Contemporary Zanzibar

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 93-103
Author(s):  
Caitlyn Bolton
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Islamic Education ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Community Agency ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Modern Nation State

Western liberal political philosophy, which undergirds the conception of the modern nation-state as theorized by European philosophers of liberalism from centuries past, is primarily concerned with the dynamics of rights and responsibilities between the individual and state institutions. In defining these dynamics, some philosophers held an assumption of human nature as inherently inclined toward selfish ends...

After Tradition?: Heidegger or MacIntyre, Aristotle and Marx

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelvin Knight
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
Alasdair Macintyre ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
Aristotelian Tradition

AbstractPhilosophical tradition has been challenged by those who would have us look to our own practice, and to nothing beyond. In this, the philosophy of Martin Heidegger is followed by the politics of Hannah Arendt, for whom the tradition of political philosophy terminated with Karl Marx’s theorization of labour. This challenge has been met by Alasdair MacIntyre, for whom the young Marx’s reconceptualization of production as a social activity can inform an Aristotelianism that addresses our shared practices in traditional, teleological terms. Looking to the social nature of our practices orientates us to common goods, to the place of those goods in our own lives, and to their place within political communities. MacIntyre’s Thomistic Aristotelian tradition has Heideggerian and other philosophical rivals, but he argues that it represents our best way of theorizing practice.

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