Ethics and Critical Race Theory – An Introduction

Critical race theory (CRT) is everywhere, it seems. It is taught, whether explicitly or implicitly, in middle and high schools, as well as universities, whether secular or Christian. It is in the news constantly. There are many buzz words associated with it, such as “systemic racism,” being “woke,” and more. Its very mention has a polarizing effect on people, with many (such as “progressives,” whether secular or Christian) endorsing policies consistent with it, while others assume it is of the devil. Several conservative politicians and commentators denounce CRT, condemning it as Marxist, un-American, and even atheistic. Some conservative Christians also have joined in, warning against CRT from various biblical standpoints.

I get the impression that several Christians seem to think that if they can identify CRT as Marxist, they can dismiss it from any consideration. But, I think that move could be shortsighted for at least a few reasons. First, I have seen a similar response to the “emergents.” I have written two books on the emergents, Truth and the New Kind of Christian (2005), and Authentically Emergent (2018). In both books, I note that they have several helpful insights for evangelicals. However, in 2010, Brian McLaren published his book, A New Kind of Christianity, and it became clearer that he was advocating changes to core Christian beliefs. It was after that that I saw how some other Christians were quick to not listen, apparently even to the good things he or others had to say. After all, they were heretics, so let’s move on. But in that attitude, they could miss the good things the emergents had to say. So, if “Crits” are indeed onto some key observations, it would be shortsighted to dismiss the whole view out of hand.

Second, in my experience, if a view has some “staying power” and influence, it usually is making some key observations. It is tapping into some aspect of reality to which people can relate. Just as the emergents did that to certain respects, I think we need to carefully examine CRT to see to what extent that may be the case, too. For instance, George Yancey, a Christian sociologist at Baylor University, notes that today “few Americans [and very few biblically conservative believers] want to openly participate in a racist social system.”[1] Nevertheless, Crits continue to offer evidence that racism still is at work in society. Instead of focusing mainly on individual racists, they study institutions. Yancey, who himself is not an advocate of CRT, argues that racism has become more subtle, working through systemic, institutionalized ways that obscure “its effects on the opportunities and freedoms of people of color.”[2] If so, then as a descriptive tool of analysis, CRT can help us notice if such practices are indeed at work, which we then could change. That is a contribution of CRT.

Third, having a better understanding of CRT would help Christians to participate more fruitfully in the many conversations taking place about racial matters. This is especially so for young adults, whether Christian or not. People who are part of Gen Z are very attuned to concerns with racism, such as with ways police treat minorities.[3] They have been grown up during police shootings of many unarmed black people, hatred toward Asians during the COVID pandemic, and suspicion of Muslims as terrorists after 9/11. To the eyes of Gen Z people, American society has promised justice, rights, equality, opportunity, and more. Yet, they have seen justice violated many times.[4] So, understanding CRT would help Christians to understand some important mindsets of Gen Z.

Crucially, Crits are making rhetorically powerful ethical claims that resonate deeply because of the history of racism in the U. S. They are arguing that racism is more pervasive than we realize, being embedded in systems and institutions, despite civil rights legislations’ effects. This is a descriptive claim about what is in fact the case. They also argue that people of color should be treated with equality, dignity, respect, and justice, yet racism is preventing them from being treated appropriately. This latter claim is a normative, ethical one, of what ought to be the case.

CRT has several other presuppositions including, for example, that people of color are being oppressed by whites, and they should be liberated from this oppression. It also presupposes certain views of what is real, including humans, namely materialism. It also maintains that we can know what is true only from our particular standpoints. Now, I will start from what CRT presupposes, that racism is morally wrong. But, a key question is this: can CRT make good on its key moral claims given its various presuppositions? That will be the focus of this series.  

[1] George Yancey, Beyond Racial Gridlock: Embracing Mutual Responsibility (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 67 (bracketed insert mine).

[2] Ibid., 67-68.

[3] They also are deeply concerned about many social justice issues, such as environmental justice, sexism, economic disparities, issues involving gender, poverty, and capitalism, and how these intersect with race.

[4] Moreover, unlike previous generations, Gen Z is growing up in an age marked by many factors, including of terrorism, human trafficking, perpetual wars, nuclear threats, distrust of politicians, and more. If the “system” is not working, it can become easy to think that people should change the system.

New essay: Critical Theory and Abortion as an Act of Oppression

My new essay just came out in Christian Research Journal (Dec 2021). Here is a synposis:

Critical theory (CT) has become a major influence in society. It maintains that oppressed groups should be liberated from their oppressors. CT manifests itself in many ways, including critical race theory and feminist theory. That is, CT provides justification for women to be liberated from their patriarchal domination, and a crucial way that can be achieved is through the permissibility of abortion. Yet, on the contrary,  I argue that abortion should be construed as immoral based on CT’s own internal logic. By determining the value of their unborn by their conceptualizations, women arbitrarily exercise power over and oppress their unborn.

Some counter that actually the unborn is an oppressor, restricting the woman’s freedom to make her own choices, as well as to define her own sense of identity via her self-conception. Another objection is that while the unborn are humans, they are not persons, for in order to count as persons, humans also have to have certain functional qualities, such as a self-concept. However, for CT, there is no equality on the basis of self-concepts. According to CT, there are no essences, and thus the claim that we are valuable because we have self-concepts is nothing but an interpretation given from a particular standpoint, which results in an arbitrary imposition of power. It is a much greater oppression for the woman to have the unborn put to death than for her to remain pregnant. Thus, taking CT consistently, the unborn need to be liberated from their oppression by abortion….

See that issue, pages 16-21.

Panel Discussion with William Lane Craig & Rich Davis on Craig’s Nominalism & the Atonement, EPS 2020

I noticed from announcement by Reasonable Faith that RF has posted a link to the panel discussion held at the 2020 Evangelical Philosophical Society national conference.

Here is that link if you’d like to watch.

And, since then, my article about this topic came out in Theologica.

Two August 2021 Updates

As is the case for all of us, COVID has impacted me as well. Part of it included a much heavier teaching load in the fall of ’20 and spring of ’21. Often I was scrambling just to keep up with online classes and students’ many posts!

Also, in many writing projects, I feel I have been “on hold,” waiting for publishers to reply to me or to release some work that I did some time ago. I have three book projects in the works, one on nominalism, another on critical race theory (an ethical, philosophical assessment), and how the church has been deeply affected by naturalism (and what to do about it).

I want to catch you up on some developments. Two essays have been published in the first half of 2021.

In January, my essay on nominalism and human dignity appeared:

“The Nominalist Foundations of Constructivist Dignity.” In The Inherence of Human Dignity: Foundations of Human Dignity, Vol. 1, ed. by Barry Bussey and Angus Menuge (Anthem Press, 2021).

These two edited volumes explore philosophical, legal, and other factors involved in human dignity discussions today (including the “new dignity”), and not just in the U.S.

Another essay was published this spring, and this one explores the implications of William Lane Craig’s anti-Platonism (or, nominalism) for the penal substitutionary theory of Christ’s atonement:

“Craig’s Anti-Platonism, Lowe’s Universals, and Christ’s Penal Substitutionary Atonement.” TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology 5(2), 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14428/thl.v5i2.55993

Two more essays, as well as one book proposal, are out for review, so I hope to have some more updates sometime soon.

Book Review of Greg Koukl’s “Tactics,” 10th Anniversary ed.

Greg Koukl, Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions, 10th anniversary edition (Zondervan, 2019).

Greg Koukl's book, "Tactics"

Greg Koukl is one of my colleagues in Biola’s MA Christian Apologetics program, and his updated version of Tactics is a must-read for all Christians who desire to be effective ambassadors for Christ. These tactics help ambassadors “effectively maneuver in a relaxed and confident way in [their] conversations with others about Christ, even when they disagree strongly with you” (17). But, his goal is not to enable Christians to “win” every conversation with those who do not yet know Christ. Instead, it is to be effective ambassadors while being a “gardener,” one who plants seeds for the gospel.

Koukl introduces the book with a general overview of the importance and role of tactics. Each chapter is accessibly and conversationally written, filled with key points and illustrations drawn from his extensive experience, followed up by a summary of what we learned. Part one focuses on the “game plan,” in which he unpacks and demonstrates the uses of his “Columbo” tactic. Part two shifts to provide tactics that help ambassadors for Christ find flaws in claims made by others.

The book is easy to read and glean many helpful tips, even from a quick read. However, careful practice of his many tips will help reap the book’s deeper benefits. These fruits come from cultivating his tactics as habits. Anticipating questions how readers can develop these habits, Koukl provides several practical suggestions in the last chapter.

In part one, he starts by stressing the need ambassadors have for knowledge, character, and wisdom (an artful method), and Koukl’s tactics focus on the third of these elements. Tactics are not “manipulative tricks or slick ruses”; instead, they are “techniques of maneuvering in what otherwise might be difficult conversations” (34). Nor are they techniques to be used to steamroll people into becoming Christians. Koukl advises that these tactics require good listening and being charitable and gracious, as well as providing thoughtful responses.

Before diving into the “Columbo” tactic, Koukl pauses to address helpfully some reservations various Christians have to engaging in argumentation. For one, he counters a common misconception, that we can argue people into the kingdom (44). Yet, he wisely realizes that simply employing methods will not result in kingdom fruit: “without God’s work, nothing else works” (45). For another, he takes off the pressure to have to convert someone to Christ in every conversation. Instead, his more modest goal in any encounter is to “put a stone in someone’s shoe,” to get that person to think more about Christ and the plausibility of the gospel’s claims.

Chapters three through nine address uses of the Columbo tactic, which Koukl names after Lt. Columbo, the homicide detective who would solve cases by asking a litany of questions. The key to using this tactic is to “go on the offensive” inoffensively “with carefully selected questions that advance the conversation” (57). There are several advantages to using questions, and Koukl suggests using them to gather information, reverse the burden of proof, and make a point (60).

The key way to gather information is to inquire of the challenger, “what do you mean by that” claim? By drawing upon his many years of experience, Koukl helpfully navigates readers through challenges to this approach.

The second is a response to claims made as a challenge to Christianity. Koukl’s recommended move here is to reverse the burden of proof by asking the person, “How did you come to that conclusion?” Moreover, he helps readers discern differences between peoples’ replies of simply giving an opinion versus an argument with reasons.

Before exploring the third step in the Columbo tactic, Koukl explains how to respond to two specific situations in which a Christian ambassador is on the defensive and the challenger is in the driver’s seat. Here, Koukl unpacks the “professor’s ploy” and “getting out of the hot seat,” as well as a third tactic he calls “narrating the debate.”

Columbo’s third step uses questions to make a point, which help the ambassador go more on the offensive, yet inoffensively. This can be done in various ways, including to help explain one’s point, set up discussion to more easily make a point, indirectly expose a flaw in another’s views, and soften the challenge to another’s views. I can resonate readily with the last two suggestions, which tend to come fairly naturally for me. Then, in wrapping up part one, Koukl addresses how to respond wisely and effectively to challenges that employ the Columbo tactic.

Part two dives into other tactics that help ambassadors find flaws in claims and reasons given by challengers to Christianity. One of the key benefits in all these chapters is how Koukl gives current, real-world illustrations and applications for each tactic. He devotes three chapters to kinds of self-refuting claims. Then, he explores “taking the roof off,” which involves taking a view to its logical conclusion, to see its flaws.

Koukl then explores many other tactics, such as the steamroller, Rhodes Scholar, just the facts ma’am, inside-out, and several mini-tactics. Once again, the power of these chapters is found in Koukl’s clear explanations and wisdom born of commitment to truth and real-life experience.

Now, I can imagine some Christians who have been influenced by the postmodern turn might consider Koukl’s book to be just another instance of “modern” apologetics and thereby dismiss it. But that would be shortsighted, I think. One of the key themes throughout this book is that believers need to engage in loving dialogues with others, and that by employing good questions and good listening (and the tactics of part two), we can have fruitful discussions about many important issues with those who are unconvinced about Christianity, and even amongst ourselves as believers. From my own experience, I have tried to be a good listener and ask good questions, and that has led to several fruitful discussions with others shaped by the postmodern turn.

Most apologetics books address specific kinds of subjects, such as arguments for God’s existence, the reliability of Scripture, morality, science, and more, providing reasons why Christianity is true. Yet, this book does something comparatively unique; it provides tools to help the ambassador for Christ know how to use this knowledge well, so as to be effective and loving. As such, this is an invaluable resource for apologists, filling in the need for a “plan to artfully manage the details of [their] dialogues with others” (33). I highly recommend the book, and its tactics deserve close study and practice.

Making Sense of Morality: Objections from Euthyphro and Evil

Various ethical terms

Image by Mary Pahlke from Pixabay

Introduction

In the previous post, I argued that there is another explanation for the ground of core morals, such as justice and love are good, and murder and rape are wrong: they are grounded in God. However, there are a couple serious objections that I will address here, and then I will summarize several of my findings.

Euthyphro Dilemma

“Euthyphro” poses a dilemma: are morals good because God commands them, or does God command them because they are good? If the former, it seems God’s will alone is the ground of morals. But, it seems God could will whatever God wanted, and it would be moral. If so, God could will things we clearly know are wrong, even evil, such as justice being bad, and rape being permissible. Earlier, I suggested this issue seems to face Allah, due to the supremacy of Allah’s sovereignty.

If the latter, it seems God’s commands are redundant, for we already should know morals are valid. Also, they seem to be valid independently of God; if so, God is not needed to ground morals. Moreover, God must consult these morals before commanding them.

 Regarding the former, the Scriptures of Judaism and Christianity portray God as being morally perfect and good. That is, God is bound by God’s character, so God would not will something that is contrary to that character. Moreover, that God is good fits with what we may know by reason and reflection (i.e., what many have called natural law), including our core morals and others too (e.g., we should not torture babies for fun).

On the latter, we may need to have some understanding of goodness before we can know God is good. But, it does not follow from that that morals are independent of God. Further, just because we can know some moral truths without God’s commands (e.g., by reason), still we possess a remarkable ability to suppress or rationalize away what we know morally. In that case, God’s commanding something we can know via reason would not be redundant, but a reinforcement and clarification of that knowledge. 

Back to Evil

So far, I’ve suggested that the best explanation of our core morals is that they are grounded in God’s moral character. But, is there more we can infer by reason?

Suppose we consider evil. Many think evil provides one of the strongest arguments against God’s existence. Yet, what kind of thing is evil? Earlier, I suggested that evil is a privation (or perversion) of goodness. Indeed, it seems hard to define evil is some way other than the way things should not be.

If that is the case, evil presupposes goodness, like Augustine suggested. What then is the best explanation for this standard of goodness? Above, I suggested it is God’s own character. Yet, we can infer more, I think. To be truly good, God must be love. This suggests God is personal. Furthermore, to be truly good, God must be truly just.

Together, these two findings suggest that God would deal with evil, yet in love and care for humans. This in turn raises questions for consideration that are beyond the scope of this book: which God is this? And, has God done this? If so, how? What are implications for us?

Final Thoughts

We have completed our survey of the major moral views in the west. I’ve argued that the best explanation for our core morals is that they are universals that are grounded in God’s morally good character. I’ve argued for this while also arguing for several more key points; e.g.:

  • Nominalism is false, and Platonic-like universals exist;
  • There are essences, including of core morals, human beings, and mental states (they have intentionality); and
  • We can know reality directly, even though our situatedness does affect us in significant ways. So, historicism is mistaken.

Notice too that from our findings, the fact-value split, the deeply held belief that science uniquely gives us knowledge of the facts, whereas ethics and religion give us just opinions and preferences, is false. Science, if grounded in naturalism and nominalism, cannot give us knowledge at all. On the other hand, we do have ethical knowledge of at least our four core morals. Maybe there are more we can know. We also have justified reasons to believe it is true that God is ground of morals – another item of knowledge.

For Further Reading

William Alston, “What Euthyphro Should Have Said,” in Philosophy of Religion: A Reader and Guide, gen. ed. William Lane Craig

R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge, chs. 12-13

Making Sense of Morality: Where Do We Go from Here?

Various ethics terms

Image by Mary Pahlke from Pixabay

Summary of the Survey

We have surveyed major ethical options for what our core morals are, including:

  • Are they how we happen to talk?
  • Are they physical things? Perhaps evolutionary products?
  • Are they ways of behaving or moving our bodies?
  • Are they results of a utilitarian calculus?
  • Are they emotive utterances?
  • Are they particulars? (nominalism)

But, at least since Hobbes, I’ve argued that none of the views can preserve our core morals of murder and rape being wrong, and love and justice being good.

What Are These Core Morals?

For one, they seem to be objectively real. They seem to exist independently of us as moral principles and values. They also simply seem to be intrinsically valid, and not due to anything else (like, the consequences). That is, they seem to have an essential moral nature. Moreover, they cannot be just physical things or particulars, as we’ve seen. Instead, they seem to be a “one-in-many” – each one is one principle (or value), yet it can have many instances/examples. In sum, they seem to be Platonic-like universals.

That raises many questions, however. Earlier, I remarked that Christine Korsgaard rightly observed that it’s hard to see how such things could have anything to do with us. While she thinks people are physical, it still applies if we are a body-soul unity. Why should these abstract objects have anything to do with us? On Plato’s view, they exist in a heavenly realm of values as brute features of reality.

What makes justice and love character qualities that should be present in us? Why is it inappropriate morally for us to murder or rape? These are normative qualities, not merely descriptive. As we’ve seen, it is hard to see how we can get the moral ought from what is descriptively the case. Yet, that problem could be overcome if humans have an essential nature that makes these moral values appropriate for them, and these acts inappropriate.

Earlier, I argued that the soul as our essential nature provides a sound explanation for how we can be the identical person through change. Body-soul dualists affirm that the soul is our essential nature, and it sets the boundary conditions for what is appropriate for us. For instance, it is inappropriate for us to grow a cat’s tail due to our nature, and it is inappropriate for us to murder due to our nature.

We also saw another reason for the soul’s existence. We do in fact think and form beliefs, yet these have intentionality, which I argued is best understood as something immaterial and having an essence. Now, it is hard to conceive how a physical brain could interact with something immaterial, but that problem does not seem to exist for an immaterial soul/mind.

Moreover, why should we feel guilt and shame when we break these core morals? That doesn’t make sense if these morals are just abstract objects that are immaterial and not located in space and time. Instead, we seem to have such responses in the presence of persons we have wronged morally. Also, retributive justice doesn’t make sense if we repay an abstract principle or value. But it would make sense if a person should be repaid.

There is another explanation we have seen for the grounding of these core morals: they are grounded in God. That helps solve the question of why we feel shame when we break one of these morals. But, that also raises questions, such as: are they good because God commands them, or does God command them because they are good (i.e., the Euthyphro dilemma)? Also, which God would this be?

I will start to tackle these in the next essay. But, first, there is another option for properties besides universals (realism) and nominalism. It is divine conceptualism; properties just are God’s concepts. Justice in us is God’s concept. Yet, concepts have intentionality, but virtues do not. When we think about people being just, we don’t mean they have a concept of justice (though they could), but that they have that virtue present in them. So, offhand, divine conceptualism seems to trade on a confusion.

For Further Reading

R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge, ch. 12

Making Sense of Morality: A Brief Assessment of MacIntyre’s Ethics

Various ethics terms

Image by Mary Pahlke from Pixabay

Some Contributions

What should we make of MacIntyre’s proposals? His ethics focuses on the importance of good character by embodying moral virtues and being authentic. He also draws attention to the importance of community. And, he emphasizes the need for living out the virtues, and not merely engaging in abstract theorizing.

Broad Concerns

As we have seen, MacIntyre and other authors writing in the light of the postmodern turn embrace nominalism. Yet, we have seen its disastrous effects, leaving us without any qualities whatsoever. So, there are no people, no morals (not even our core ones), no world, etc. But surely this is false, and it destroys morality.

We also have surveyed issues with historicism, which ends up with no way to start making interpretations. Yet, are we really so situated that we cannot access reality directly? Now, surely no human is blind to nothing, and we cannot know something exhaustively. Surely we have our biases, too.

Yet, from daily life, it seems we can notice that we do access reality. For example, how do children learn to form concepts of apples? It seems it is by having many experiences of them. Then they can notice their commonalities, and they can form a concept on that basis. Then they can use that concept to compare something else they see (e.g., a tomato) and notice if it too is an apple or not. Adults do this, too, when they use phones to refill prescriptions, or enter their “PIN” for a debit card purchase.

It seems to be a descriptive fact that we can compare our concepts with things as they are, just as in that apple example. We also can adjust our concepts to better fit with reality. I think we can know this to be so, if we pay close attention to what is consciously before our minds.

However, how we attend to what we are aware of can reflect patterns. We can fall into ruts, noticing some things while not attending to others. As J. P. Moreland suggests, “situatedness functions as a set of habit forming background beliefs and concepts that direct our acts of noticing or failing to notice various features of reality” (Moreland, 311). But these habits do not preclude us from accessing reality.

Specific Concerns

Now, MacIntyre rejects the soul as the basis for one’s being the same person through change. For one, it would be an essence, and he seems to think humans are just bodies (Dependent Rational Animals, 6). Can the unity of one’s narrative meet this need?

For him, a narrative does not have an essence; it is composed of sentences that tell a person’s story. At any time, the narrative’s identity just is the bundle of sentences that are its members. However, if a new sentence is added, then the set of members has changed, and a new story has taken the old one’s place. Sadly, then, someone cannot grow in virtue or rationality on this view, for they do not maintain their identity through change.

Moreover, can we really see that one tradition is rationally superior to another? MacIntyre in banking on our ability to become bilingual. However, on his view, a person at any time is constituted by his or her narrative, and that in turn cannot be pried off from the tradition on which it is based. When a person immerses him or herself into another tradition to learn its language, that learning always will be done from the interpretive standpoint of the first tradition, by which that person has been formed. Indeed, it could not be otherwise, since that person is narratively “constituted” by the first tradition’s conceptual/linguistic framework. But, as that person “learns” that second language, new sentences should be added to that person’s narrative. Yet, if so, that person no longer is the same! So it becomes impossible to see the rational superiority of another tradition on his own views.

For Further Reading

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 3rd ed.; Dependent Rational Animals; and Whose Justice? Which Rationality?

J. P. Moreland, “Two Areas of Reflection and Dialogue with John Franke,” Philosophia Christi 8:2 (2006)

R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge, ch. 11

Making Sense of Morality: Alasdair MacIntyre’s Ethics

Various ethics terms

Image by Mary Pahlke from Pixabay

MacIntyre’s Diagnosis

MacIntyre (b. 1929) observes people seem to speak from different moral standpoints, or languages. Some talk as though they are emotivists, while others are Kantians, utilitarians, relativists, Aristotelians, etc. But, it seems we no longer have a way to dialogue morally and come to agreements. These different ways of morally talking seem to presuppose objective standards to evaluate them. However, he claims that fails because they presuppose different evaluative concepts and frameworks.

This situation leads to shouting matches. This happened, he thinks, because the Enlightenment “project” dropped the idea of a moral telos (goal, end) from Aristotle and Aquinas. Without it, we seem left with just human nature as it is, and ethics as the tools to become moral. But, what should we be like?

With the different moral theories so far, MacIntyre thinks we lack how rationally to decide between them. He claims this is because no independent, rational standards exist to decide between them.

Without a cogent answer, Nietzsche wins – ethics is just about power after all. Or, perhaps we discarded an earlier moral tradition too quickly. MacIntyre thinks we should recover the Aristotelian moral tradition (and later, Thomism) to solve this dilemma.

MacIntyre’s Proposal

To recover Aristotle’s ethics, MacIntyre recommends several changes. First, while Aristotle depended upon the soul to ground a person’s identity through change (including growth in virtue), MacIntyre says we must reject the soul. In its place, he argues for the narrative unity to a person. One’s narrative is drawn from the narrative context of that person’s form of life (community), with its formative story and language.

While Aristotle’s virtues were universal properties present in one’s soul, MacIntyre needs a new basis for them. He appeals to practices, such as medicine, which are socially established, systematic, cooperative activities with goods internal and external to them. For a doctor, the internal goods include helping sick people get well, while an external good could be material prosperity. Practices have standards of excellence (virtue, or arête), and practitioners’ abilities to achieve those goals, and their understanding thereof, grow.

Instead of Aristotle’s context (the Greek polis), MacIntyre appeals to traditions, which are extended historically. They are socially embodied by particular peoples in their communities. A tradition is an argument “about the goods which constitute that tradition” (MacIntyre, After Virtue, 229). For example, Christianity could be a tradition, formed by many particular Christian communities down through time.

The telos of one’s life come from the intersection of that life with the master story of the tradition. Moral virtues enable the pursuit of a telos for the good of that person, to sustain the tradition, and help achieve the goods internal to practices.

MacIntyre and Language

MacIntyre draws heavily upon the later Wittgenstein’s (d. 1951) views of language. Each language is nominal and tied to a given form of life. Language does not have universal meaning. Instead, meaning is a matter of language use (verbal and nonverbal behavior) in that context, according to its grammatical rules and formative story.

Rationality is not some universal phenomenon; it is tied to a tradition with its master story (e.g., for Christians, the gospel story) and language. Though we always access reality through the interpretive lens of our tradition, MacIntyre still maintains there is a real world apart from our interpretations.

Yet, MacIntyre argues that we can rationally adjudicate which tradition is rationally better than another. How? It cannot be done as an outsider to a tradition; it has to be done from the inside. One learns the language of one’s own tradition, and learns to interpret and reason from under that “aspect.” But, that person also can immerse him or herself in another tradition and learn its language as a second first language. That way, by being able to reason and interpret in both ways, that person can “see” if a tradition can solve its own problems and that of another. If so, that tradition is rationally superior and deserves one’s allegiance. So, we can avoid relativism, even though rational standards are internal to each tradition.

For Further Reading

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 3rd ed., and Whose Justice? Which Rationality?

R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge, ch. 9