Volume 87, 2013
Aristotle Now and Then
Alasdair MacIntyre
Pages 43-56
Philosophical Education Against Contemporary Culture
Four stages in an adequate philosophical education are distinguished. The first is that in which students learn to put in question some commonly shared assumptions about what happiness is and to ask what the good of engaging in this kind of questioning is. The second is a conceptual and linguistic analysis of “good” which enables questions about what human goods are to be formulated. The third is an investigation into the nature and unity of human beings designed to enable us to propose rationally justifiable answers to those questions. In the fourth and final stage those questions are posed.