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After Virtue, Third Edition cover art

After Virtue, Third Edition

By: Alasdair MacIntyre
Narrated by: Derek Perkins
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Summary

When After Virtue first appeared in 1981, it was recognized as a significant and potentially controversial critique of contemporary moral philosophy. Since that time, the book has been translated into more than 15 foreign languages and has sold over 100,000 copies. Now, 25 years later, the University of Notre Dame Press is pleased to release the third edition of After Virtue, which includes a new prologue: "After Virtue After a Quarter of a Century".

In this classic work, Alasdair MacIntyre examines the historical and conceptual roots of the idea of virtue, diagnoses the reasons for its absence in personal and public life, and offers a tentative proposal for its recovery. While the individual chapters are wide-ranging, once pieced together, they comprise a penetrating and focused argument about the price of modernity.

In the third edition's prologue, MacIntyre revisits the central theses of the book and concludes that, although he has learned a great deal and has supplemented and refined his theses and arguments in other works, he has "as yet found no reason for abandoning the major contentions" of this book. While he recognizes that his conception of human beings as virtuous or vicious needed not only a metaphysical but also a biological grounding, ultimately he remains "committed to the thesis that it is only from the standpoint of a very different tradition, one whose beliefs and presuppositions were articulated in their classical form by Aristotle, that we can understand both the genesis and the predicament of moral modernity."

©2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

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Finally got round to 'reading' this!

Strongly suspect my entire degree course was based on this book but only just got around to 'reading' it cover to cover. I may be biased by my education(!) but it's a massively important work in ethics and a must read for anyone struggling to reconcile the range of ethical theories in the post-enlightenment world. I still don't fully understand his arguments against Kiekegaard, but the book raises massive issues that most modern ethicists would probably prefer to ignore. Some of the pronunciations in the reading are iffy. Took me ages to realise that Go-worth was Goethe!

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A truly great (though flawed) work in philosophy

A great work, from an intellectual giant. You don't have to agree with MacIntyre's whole package of conclusions to find this a superb study of the history of moral thought, virtue ethics and parlous state of modern moral discourse. Perfectly and clearly narrated.

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A magisterial book read well

After Virtue is not an easy book, even for philosophers. This is partly because because of its conceptual and methodological range, but also because MacIntyre, though always clear, is not shy of subordinate clauses. Perkins ought to be commended then for readings at a pace that makes AV more digestible. I shall be looking out for more books read by him.

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the blueprint for the coming culture

probably the most interesting and important book I have ever listened to, and in my opinion provides the framework for a better mindset for humans in search for the best life for humans in nature. You must also have the mindset of we are not individuals that only exist in each moment, but we are all molding each other through our entire lives so we are story's of our selves and all the stories of the people around us that intertwine and twist with ours in the story of humans on this planet in the story of the world. And as for now we are the most self aware stories there are with the most complex and detailed interaction there can be. we are one with the community around us so improving both the community and our souls is nessesery for a better life and that only comes when we understand that we are one with nature and our community

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Excellent

This is an excellent book. However, I am not a philosopher and in some parts of the book, I think I would benefit from sitting down and reading slowly. This is what I intend to do. I also have a hard copy of the book.

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Morality & Life

“After Virtue” has many virtues. The greatest among these is that, in spite of its academic tone, it succeeds in being accessible to a general reader. There are technical terms & occasional lapses into academic mumbling, but these are sparingly rare. In nearly every case the context & author’s striving for clarity resolves any obscurity. And, on the whole, detailed discussion of the work of other philosophers encourages but does rely upon in-depth scholarship on the part of the reader, although some familiarity with Western philosophic literature has to be taken for granted.

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Public education at its best

This book is, perhaps the best ever written on ethics. Its inclusion for free in the audible subscription service. Yes everyone a chance to understand why we have reached our current impasse, just a few years after the defeat of the great dictators.

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incredibly lucid philo/historical argunent

MacIntyre's clear, lucid, and nuanced elucidation of the contemporary West's moral and ideological malaise is over forty years old now. But it has aged well, and MacIntyre's concern for the incommensurable premises of the West's moral dialogues feels more urgent in the 'post-truth' political age than ever.

The narrator's unhurried, precise delivery is the perfect counterpoint to MacIntyre's clear, but never cold, prose style.

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A masterpiece of ethics and read excellently.

MacIntyre's work is a must read for those who seek to understand ethics in a world where subjectivism and nihilism have all but conquered. After virtue is a torch in the dark, showing us the path back to Aristotelian concepts long alienated by the enlightenment, modernity and post-modernity.

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