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41. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 4
Geoff Moore, Ron Beadle, Anna Rowlands Catholic Social Teaching and the Firm: Crowding in Virtue: A MacIntyrean Approach to Business Ethics
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Catholic Social Teaching (CST) aspires to an economy that serves needs, upholds justice, and inculcates subsidiarity. But it suffers from a significant omission—it fails to look “inside” the business organisations that comprise the fundamental building blocks of the economic system. It is therefore ill-equipped to suggest how businesses could be reformed to meet these aspirations. MacIntyre’s Thomistic Aristotelian account of the relationships between goods, virtues, practices and institutions provides resources that could enable CST to overcome this lacuna. This paper describes the MacIntyrean account and compares it with CST’s existing categories. It then analyses the case of the Lloyds Banking Group. This allows not only diagnosis, but potentially a prescriptive account of how virtue may be “crowded-in” to business organisations. The paper concludes by suggesting that this approach might make a distinctive contribution to CST, and hence enable CST to make an even more significant contribution to business ethics.
42. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 4
Christopher Stephen Lutz Tradition as a Fragile Practice: Some Implications of Alasdair MacIntyre’s Theory of Rationality for the Study of Philosophy
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This paper has four parts. The first part gives an overview of Alasdair MacIntyre’s theory of rationality; the remaining three parts examine the theory’s implications through the consideration of three examples. Two examples, the reception of MacIntyre’s mature work and the study of Thomas Aquinas’s Five Ways, illustrate the implications of MacIntyre’s theory for reading and interpreting contemporary literature and historical texts. A third example, the investigation of late medieval nominalism, shows how the more straightforward problems of reading and interpreting can be exacerbated during periods of transition within traditions. Traditions, it turns out, can be fragile, yet once broken they are capable of concealing their incoherence and inconsistency from their current and future scholars. If MacIntyre’s theory that rationality is both tradition-constituted and tradition-constitutive is truthful, it follows that the work of contemporary reading, traditional interpretation, and historical scholarship always requires careful attention to differences in rationalities, lest readers misinterpret by filling gaps in their readings with their own presuppositions.
43. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 4
Bryan R. Cross MacIntyre on the Practice of Philosophy and the University
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Especially since his “Reconceiving the University as an Institution and the Lecture as a Genre,” Alasdair MacIntyre has repeatedly returned to the subject of reconceiving university education, proposing a vision of what a university is and what a university education should be that differs widely from contemporary institutions and practices, and offering strong criticisms of the contemporary research university. He has argued provocatively that in its present form, the contemporary research university is not a university at all because it does not carry out the purpose of a university. MacIntyre has also argued that philosophical practice always takes place within some tradition or other, and has identified as his own the broader Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition in which philosophy is to be understood as a craft. In this essay I examine and develop the relationship between MacIntyre’s critique of the contemporary research university, and his conception of philosophy as a craft practiced within a tradition.
44. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 4
Paul Blackledge Alasdair MacIntyre as a Marxist and as a Critic of Marxism
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This essay reconstructs Alasdair MacIntyre’s engagement with Marxism with a view both to illuminating the co-ordinates of his mature thought and to outlining a partial critique of that thought. While the critique of Marxism outlined in After Virtue is well known, until recently Marx’s profound influence on MacIntyre was obscured by a thoroughly misleading attempt to label him as a communitarian thinker. If this erroneous interpretation of MacIntyre’s mature thought is now widely discredited, the fact that he has distanced himself from several of the arguments he previously gave for rejecting Marxism both reduces the theoretical space between his mature thought and his early Marxism and highlights a consistent theme in his critique of Marxism since the 1960s to which this essay is addressed: his dissatisfaction with the ethical dimension of Marxist attempts to theorise the relationship between socialist militants and the working-class movement from below.
45. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 4
John C. Caiazza Paradigms, Traditions, and History: The Influence of Philosophy of Science on MacIntyre’s Ethical Thought
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MacIntyre’s mature ethical philosophy was the result of his becoming aware of trends in the philosophy of science in the 1970s when MacIntyre had reached a block in the development of his ethical theory. MacIntyre translated Kuhn’s theory of “paradigms” and Lakatos’s “research programmes” into his richly developed theory of ethical “traditions,” which constitutes a historicist ethical philosophy. This point is argued by a detailed comparison of Kuhn’s theory of paradigms with MacIntyre’s traditions; emphasizing paradigms rather than research programs is more productive for highlighting the historicist aspects of MacIntyre’s ethical philosophy. Paradigms and traditions are compared in four areas. Both philosophies deny the validity of the Enlightenment ideal of universal reason, and of social science. Kuhn never resolves the issues connected with the radical incomparability of paradigms. MacIntyre does derive a method of comparing ethical traditions in favor of the Augustinian/Aristotelian/Thomistic one. Questions of ontology remain.
46. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 4
Christophe Rouard The Thomism of Alasdair MacIntyre: Which Ethics? Which Epistemology?
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This article studies the Thomism of Alasdair MacIntyre. On the ethical level, it highlights the importance of the thesis of the unity of the virtues in the philosopher’s work. This thesis is linked to an underlying epistemology the article clarifies. The God of the Prima Pars constitutes the Archimedean point of that epistemology, which the distinctions made in the De Veritate and De Ente and Essentia explain philosophically. This epistemology is at the heart of MacIntyrean thought, which is opposed in that to Hilary Putnam, an important foil in his work. The article shows how. It presents the way in which Alasdair MacIntyre moves beyond the internalist impasse while honoring the relativity of all rational investigation. It likens his thought to that of Charles Sanders Peirce while shedding light on the Thomistic specificity of the MacIntyrean theory of truth. It positions Alasdair MacIntyre’s work within the context of contemporary Thomism.
47. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 4
Kelvin Knight History and Plurality
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Alasdair MacIntyre has long believed that philosophy should be conducted with reference to its past. Since After Virtue, he has argued that philosophy’s past should be understood in terms of rival traditions. This essay attempts to chart the development of MacIntyre’s historical thinking about ethics against the longer development of liberalism’s rival tradition of thinking about history, drawing contrasts with what was said by Immanuel Kant on progress, R. G. Collingwood on civilization, and John Rawls on pluralism.
48. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 4
Alasdair MacIntyre Ends and Endings
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The question posed in this paper is: Is there an end to some type of activity which is the end of any rational agent? It approaches an answer by a critical examination of one view of human beings that excludes this possibility, that advanced by Harry Frankfurt. It is argued that once we have distinguished, as Frankfurt does not, that which we have good reason to care about from that which we do not have good reason to care about, we are able to identify a conception of a final end for human activity, one that we put to work when wee consider the ways in which a life may have gone wrong and one that we find indispensable for our understanding of narrative.
49. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 88 > Issue: 4
Sante Maletta Beyond the Naked Square: The Idea of an Agonistic Public Sphere
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The major aim of this paper is to present some reflections about the political domain and the common good that may be helpful in answering the following issue: How can religions contribute to the common good? The problematic background of this paper can be summarized by the so-called Dilemma of Böckenförde (“The free secular state lives according to presuppositions that it cannot itself guarantee”), which presents the difficulties secular states have in creating social capital, and by the Habermasian notion of a “post-secular society,” an expression used by the German philosopher to summarize the curious situations of Western secularized states, where religions continue to play important public roles. I will first discuss the notion of “neutralization” with the support of Carl Schmitt. Then I will present Chantal Mouffe’s doctrine of “agonistic pluralism” and her partial legitimization of the presence of religions in the political domain. Finally, I will criticize Mouffe’s approach with the help of Alasdair MacIntyre’s phenomenology of social practices in order to stress the importance of public religions in contemporary liberal societies.
50. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 1
John Zeis The Theological Implications of Double Effect
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Double effect reasoning (DER) is central to Catholic moral theology. It is the principle which enables it to maintain absolute moral standards while effectively handling morally difficult choices which entail bringing about some evil as well as the good. DER has been focused on the way in which it applies to human agents and their relation to bringing about evil as well as the good. According to DER, only the good can be brought about intentionally; evil can only be brought about as the side effect of the good. It will be argued that DER also applies to God’s choices. It is our best resource for understanding God’s relation to evil in the world He creates.
51. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 1
Deane-Peter Baker Abortion and Civil Disobedience
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Many believe strongly that states, even democratic states, commit serious moral harm by adopting policies that allow elective abortions. What avenues are available to citizens of those states who oppose such policies? In this paper I contest Nicholas Dixon’s claim that there is only a very limited scope for acts of civil disobedience in response to pro-abortion state policy. While acknowledging that a state policy of not allowing elective abortions imposes significant burdens on pregnant women, I contend that a consistent political liberalism—committed to the idea of state neutrality—must recognize the validity of significant, even invasive, civil disobedience in response to states that follow a policy of allowing elective abortions.
52. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 1
Clare Carlisle Spinoza On Eternal Life
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This article argues that Spinoza’s account of the eternity of the mind in Part V of the Ethics offers a re-interpretation of the Christian doctrine of eternal life. While Spinoza rejects the orthodox Christian teaching belief in personal immortality and the resurrection of the body, he presents an alternative account of human eternity that retains certain key characteristics of the Johannine doctrine of eternal life, especially as this is articulated in the First Letter of John. The article shows how Spinoza’s account of human eternity reflects two key principles of his philosophy: the ideal of union with God, and the possibility of the human being’s ontological transformation through this union.
53. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 1
Patrick J. Connolly Henry of Ghent’s Argument for Divine Illumination Reconsidered
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In this paper I offer a new approach to Henry of Ghent’s argument for divine illumination. Normally, Henry is criticized for adhering to a theory of divine illumination and failing to accept rediscovered Aristotelian approaches to cognition and epistemology. I argue that these critiques are mistaken. On my view, Henry was a proponent of Aristotelianism. But Henry discovered a tension between Aristotle’s views on teleology and the nature of knowledge, on the one hand, and various components of the Christian worldview, on the other. I argue that Henry’s adherence to a theory of divine illumination was an attempt to preserve various components of the Aristotelian system, not an attempt to reject Aristotelianism.
54. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 1
Jamie Anne Spiering “What is Freedom?”: An Instance of the Silence of St. Thomas
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Josef Pieper wrote about “the silence of St. Thomas”—faced with some of philosophy’s toughest questions, Thomas does not give “a textbook reply.” In this paper, I note an instance of such silence: Thomas gives no dogmatic, unequivocal answer to the question “What is freedom?” and this omission seems to have been deliberate. While his predecessors and contemporaries (such as Albert the Great and Henry of Ghent) discussed the definition of freedom formally, Thomas does not do so, nor does he offer a precise account of libertas. Why would Thomas avoid this debate? An answer is necessarily tentative, but I argue that Thomas wanted to simplify his treatment of the power of choice. In addition, he may be convinced that freedom is best understood as instantiated within a nature or its powers, making any abstract consideration fundamentally unfruitful.
55. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 1
Rogelio Rovira On the Manifold Meaning of Value according to Dietrich von Hildebrand and the Need for a Logic of the Concept of Value
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Hildebrand’s basic contribution to phenomenological axiology can be summarized as follows: the concept of value is, in one sense, narrower than most phenomenologists have suggested; but, in another sense, is broader than any phenomenologist has believed necessary to defend. According to Hildebrand, the name of “value” can only be properly applied to “the intrinsically important.” But the intrinsically important has to be described phenomenologically both in its pure qualitative content and in its relation to being. Thus, four kinds of specifically distinct values appear: (1) the qualitative values; (2) the ontological values; (3) the values of perfection or technical values; and (4) the formal value of “being something.” Hildebrand’s contribution poses a difficult question which he himself does not deal with: what unity do these several meanings of value have? The mere indication of the problem suggests any solution requires a rigorous logic of the concept of value.
56. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 1
Brandon Dahm Distinguishing Desire and Parts of Happiness: A Response to Germain Grisez
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Germain Grisez has recently argued that Aquinas’s claim that God alone is our ultimate end is incompatible with other claims central to Aquinas’s account of happiness. Two of these arguments take their point of departure from Aquinas’s distinction between essential perfections and perfections of well-being. I argue that both of these arguments fail. The first, which argues that the distinction is incompatible with the beatific vision being perfect fulfillment, fails because it neglects a distinction between essential and accidental perfectibility. In the second, Grisez argues that Aquinas’s distinction between types of happiness is incompatible with his claim that the beatific vision satisfies all desire. I argue that Aquinas makes a distinction between two types of desire that rebuts the objection. I conclude by explaining how clarifying these distinctions in perfectibility and desire allows for a more nuanced account of the happiness of the separated, beatified soul.
57. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 1
William E. Tullius Renewal and Tradition: Phenomenology as “Faith Seeking Understanding” in the Work of Edmund Husserl
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This paper seeks to understand the place of phenomenology within the Christian philosophical tradition. Contrary to common conceptions of phenomenology, and in spite of Husserl’s own description of phenomenology as an “a-theistic” project, this paper will attempt to interpret the complex relationship of Husserl’s understanding of phenomenology to the religious tradition ultimately as a function of that very tradition. In so doing, this paper will explore the philosophical concept of “vocation” in Husserl’s usage, its application to the intended role of phenomenology as an agent of moral and religious “renewal,” and the role played by the concept of tradition in Husserl’s thought, which demands explicit reflection on Husserl’s own relation to the tradition. This will allow the possibility of re-envisioning the overall sense of phenomenological discussion and its place within the tradition of philosophy, particularly in the relation of Husserlian phenomenology to the Anselmian project of “faith seeking understanding.”
58. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 2
Paul Symington The Analogical Logic of Discovery and the Aristotelian Epistemic Principle: A Semantic Foundation for Divine Naming in Aquinas
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In this paper, I focus on the important semantic components involved in analogy in hopes of providing an epistemic ground for predicating names of God analogously. To this task, I address a semantic/epistemic problem, which concludes that the doctrine of analogy lacks epistemological grounding insofar as it presupposes a prior understanding of God in order to sufficiently alter a given concept to be proportionate to God. In hopes of avoiding this conclusion, I introduce Aquinas’s specifically semantic aspects that follow after the real distinction between a thing’s esse and its essence or form in the context of analogy and show that the ratio of a term can be altered in a way proportionate to a consideration of the mode of being of God.
59. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 2
Hans Feichtinger “Nothing Rash Must Be Said”: Augustine on Pythagoras
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Augustine comments on Pythagoras in many of his works. The early dialogues can speak very positively about the ancient philosopher; later, Augustine’s remarks become more nuanced. Still, he always reserves a certain respect for Pythagoras, which is significant as Pythagoras was a symbolic figure in Neoplatonic attempts to provide a philosophical understanding of Greco-Roman religion. Despite the differences between Christian and Pythagorean theology (understood as philosophical way of speaking about God), Augustine underlines those traits in Pythagoras’s thinking that distinguish him from other philosophical and popular views on questions of religion and “natural theology.” In accordance with his own Christian concept of the need for mediation and grace, Augustine appreciates in particular Pythagoras’s humility, best expressed in not calling himself “wise” but rather a “philosopher.” Augustine’s views on Pythagoras, while evolving, always remain balanced and provide a good example of how he relates to pre-Christian philosophers in general.
60. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Volume > 89 > Issue: 2
Lynda Gaudemard Disposition and Latent Teleology in Descartes’s Philosophy
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Most contemporary metaphysicians think that a teleological approach to mereological composition and the whole-part relation should be ignored because it is an obsolete view of the world. In this paper, I discuss Descartes’s conception of individuation and composition of material objects such as stones, machines, and human bodies. Despite the fact that Descartes officially rejected ends from his philosophy of matter, I argue, against some scholars, that to appeal to the notion of disposition was a way for him to maintain teleological reference within a mechanistic conception of nature. Through a study of Descartes’s texts, I also want to make clear why it might be difficult to entirely ignore teleological notions, when one wants to account for composition and unity of material objects.