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Practical Rationalities As Forms of Social Structure

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... Inými slovami, filozofia by mala byť v politike prítomná prostredníctvom kritickej tematizácie politiky, podporou systematickosti jej politickej diskusie (v tom zmysle aj jej väčšej principiálnosti), ale aj vnášaním takých tém do diskusie, ktoré súvisia s politickým rozhodovacím procesom, napríklad témy stelesňujúce zásadné otázky týkajúce sa rôznych spôsobov života ( [15], 238). 16 V súčasnej politickej filozofii diskusie o spravodlivosti (najmä distributívnej) zaberajú mimoriadne rozsiahlu a významnú agendu. Tieto diskusie sa však súčasne týkajú formulovania (príp. ...
... 298).9 MacIntyre využíva aj rozmanité stratégie argumentácie proti morálnemu relativizmu (či subjektivizmu), založené na prvých princípoch prirodzeného práva (pozri[6];[16]). ...
... Inými slovami, filozofia by mala byť v politike prítomná prostredníctvom kritickej tematizácie politiky, podporou systematickosti jej politickej diskusie (v tom zmysle aj jej väčšej principiálnosti), ale aj vnášaním takých tém do diskusie, ktoré súvisia s politickým rozhodovacím procesom, napríklad témy stelesňujúce zásadné otázky týkajúce sa rôznych spôsobov života ( [15], 238). 16 V súčasnej politickej filozofii diskusie o spravodlivosti (najmä distributívnej) zaberajú mimoriadne rozsiahlu a významnú agendu. Tieto diskusie sa však súčasne týkajú formulovania (príp. ...
... 298).9 MacIntyre využíva aj rozmanité stratégie argumentácie proti morálnemu relativizmu (či subjektivizmu), založené na prvých princípoch prirodzeného práva (pozri[6];[16]). ...
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The term of practice plays an important role in MacIntyre's philosophy. He uses it in two different ways: either generally as contrasted with theory, or as a specifically defined term within his Neo-Aristotelianism. These two meanings are independent from each other. The paper is a reconstruction of MacIntyre's argument concerning the notion of practice in its general sense and as related to the concept of theory. First, it analyses practice as opposed to theory, and its Marxist roots; second, it outlines the post-Marxist revolutionary "Benedictine" vision of MacIntyre's Thomistic Aristotelianism; third, the issue in question is exemplified via the mutual relationship between political philosophy and politics; finally, several implications of the author's argument are suggested. The paper claims that those engaged in elaboration, critique and implementation of political and/or moral theories may benefit from MacIntyre's insightful account of the significance of practice for theory.
... These "communities of shared belief" (MacIntyre, 1988, pp. 3-5, 8-9) housing practices take different forms. They represent specific ways in which life in common is institutionalized through hierarchies of rules, practices, virtues and goods (MacIntyre, 1998a(MacIntyre, , 1998b. "Practices never have a goal or goals fixed for all time (…) but the goals themselves are transmuted by the history of the activity" (MacIntyre, 2007(MacIntyre, [1981, p. 187). ...
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The purpose of this paper is to show how a MacIntyre‐inspired business school could contribute to developing practical wisdom in students through its curriculum, methods, faculty, student selection criteria, and governance. Despite MacIntyre's critiques, management can be presented, in MacIntyrean terms, as a second‐order, domain‐relative practice, with practical wisdom as corresponding virtue. Management education consists in developing practical wisdom. How? Primarily by initiating students and enabling them to participate in communal traditions of inquiry focused on, although not limited to, the purposes and ends of business. The transmission of objective knowledge, analytical skills, and techniques is subordinated to the end goal. We consider traditions centered on shareholder value maximization, the balancing of stakeholder interests, and the fulfillment of the common good of firms. Each gives rise to a particular kind of business school. A MacIntyrean business school is one that seeks the common good of firms.
... 3-5) refers to the latter as "communities of shared belief," which house practices that adopt different forms over time and place. Indeed, these communities embody different ways of institutionalizing life in common through specific hierarchies of rules, practices, virtues, and goods (MacIntyre 1998a(MacIntyre , 1998b. ...
Chapter
After the publication of Anscombe’s essay Modern Moral Philosophy in 1958, virtue ethics has experienced a philosophical revival. This chapter examines the similarities and differences regarding the understanding of the virtue of practical wisdom by the main authors who followed the wave that Anscombe set in motion in this “recovery of virtue ethics.” After reviewing the perspectives on practical wisdom of Anscombe, Foot, Hursthouse, Annas, and Russell, the chapter focuses on the elaborations of Alasdair MacIntyre and the Catholic Social Teaching. Finally, it explores how the concept of practical wisdom in the tradition of virtue ethics is challenged by new technologies and reviews Vallor’s concept of technomoral wisdom.
... Secondly, if rationality is historical, and forms of rationality are tied to specific institutionalised social orders (MacIntyre, 1987), it is important to examine the nature of such institutions. MacIntyre provides an understanding of those structural conditions through which neoliberalism successfully extends the model of homo oeconomicus. ...
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Neoliberalism, in various ways, is radically new. It is nevertheless constructed from the conditions of liberal modernity, the inadequacies of which are crucial to neoliberal success. Liberalism in practice restricts moral agency through an impoverished, structurally-reinforced conception of practical reasoning, as Alasdair MacIntyre argues, and this is important to understanding neoliberal durability. This article argues that a bureaucratic culture that fails to evaluate or critically question the ends it pursues is both symptomatic of liberal inadequacies and a key factor in neoliberal success. Beyond its purely explanatory power, there is a political relevance to MacIntyre’s Aristotelian-inspired politics of local community. It is from those practices and communal movements that embody alternative conceptions of the good, that those interested in resisting neoliberalism can learn how it becomes possible to successfully challenge aspects of the contemporary social order.
... On MacIntyre's Aristotelian account, moral agency is a potentiality and virtue nothing other than its actualisation as 'excellence in human agency' (Lutz 2012, p. 150). Our development towards becoming such agents is highly dependent on the social structures we inhabit and the forms of practical rationality they entail (MacIntyre 1979(MacIntyre , 1987(MacIntyre , 1999b(MacIntyre , 2000(MacIntyre , 2016. For MacIntyre, it is not the self-regarding orientation of corporate life but rather the modes of thought and action required of those who pursue such corporate aims at work, the common goods of family life at home and public goods in their thinking as citizens, that corrodes their moral agency by dis-integrating it. ...
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It has been claimed that ‘virtuous structures’ can foster moral agency in organisations. We investigate this in the context of employee involvement in corporate philanthropy, an activity whose moral status has been disputed. Employing Alasdair MacIntyre’s account of moral agency, we analyse the results of eight focus groups with employees engaged in corporate philanthropy in an employee-owned retailer, the John Lewis Partnership. Within this organisational context, Employee–Partners’ moral agency was evidenced in narrative accounts of their engagement in philanthropic activities and in their disputes about the moral status of corporate philanthropy.
... What emerges from such discourse is that society establishes what is considered (at any given time) to be "moral. " Thus, moral cognitions and actions are internal processes that occur in, and reflect external contexts (MacIntyre, 1998(MacIntyre, , 1999Giordano et al., 2016;Jotterand, 2016). Second, criteria must be applied for empirically confirming when a physiological/neurological intervention shifts personal conduct in a desired moral direction (Shook, 2016). ...
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Positive assessments of moral enhancement too often isolate intuitive notions about its benefits apart from the relevance of surrounding society or civic institutions. If moral bioenhancement should benefit both oneself and others, it cannot be conducted apart from the enhancement of local social conditions, or the preparedness of civic institutions. Neither of those considerations has been adequately incorporated into typical neuroethical assessments of ambitious plans for moral bioenhancement. Enhancing a person to be far less aggressive and violent than an average person, what we label as “civil enhancement,” seems to be quite moral, yet its real-world social consequences are hardly predictable. A hypothetical case about how the criminal justice system would treat an offender who already received civil enhancement serves to illustrate how civic institutions are unprepared for moral enhancement.
... That's why, in the initial and primitive form, the statement I want such and such' will not move her to an action. 68 Although in Humean practical reasoning there is also no such a statement as I want such and such', but the explanation of this statement is different from Aristotle. Contrary to Aristotle, for Hume, reason has not itself any practical role to move us to an action, unless it will be the servant of some passion. ...
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Alasdair MacIntyre, modern ahlakı duygucu karaktere sahip olmakla eleştirir ve merkez eseri Erdem Peşinde’de bu ahlaka içerik kazandıran temel şahsiyet olarak David Hume’a işaret eder. MacIntyre’a göre Hume’un ve sonrasında onun etkisiyle gelişen duygucu ahlak felsefesi, genelde klasik ahlak geleneğine, özelde ise Aristoteles ahlak felsefesine temel zıtlıklar içerir. Ancak MacIntyre, bir taraftan bu zıtlığın Erdem Peşinde kitabında altını çizerken, diğer yandan Erdem Peşinde dışındaki -özellikle sonraki- yazılarında Hume ve Aristoteles’i ahlakın nasıl anlaşılması gerektiği noktasında benzer bakış açılarına sahip olarak bir araya getirir. Bu durum, MacIntyre’ın Hume yorumunu, görünüşte birbirini dışlayan bu anlama şekillerine işaret eden, iki farklı bakışla ele alınması gerekliliğini ortaya çıkarır. Bu makale, bu iki bakma şeklini bir araya getirerek, MacIntyre’ın Hume’u modern duyguculuk içerisinde konumlandırmasına dair bütünlüklü bir kavrayışı ortaya çıkarmayı amaçlamaktadır.
... The challenges of this task are difficult to underestimate however. MacIntyre holds, alongside hermeneutics, that traditions are the bearers of the substantive rationalities on which intelligibility and judgment depend (MacIntyre 1987a(MacIntyre , 1987b(MacIntyre , 1987c(MacIntyre , 1988. We cannot turn to a system of rationality through which to decide between the claims of traditions because rational justification is itself tradition-constituted. ...
Article
In this chapter, we set out to demonstrate how organizational theory and analysis can benefit from the work of the distinguished philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. In the first part of the chapter we show how MacIntyre's conception of how rival traditions may move towards reconciliation has the potential to resolve the relativist conclusions that bedevil organization theory. In the second part, we show how MacIntyre's ‘goods–virtues–practices–institutions’ general theory provides a framework for reconciling the fields of organization theory and organizational ethics. In the third part, we provide a worked example of these two strands to demonstrate the implications of MacIntyre's philosophy for organizational analysis. We conclude with a research agenda for a distinctively MacIntyrean organization theory.
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Along this chapter I discuss different theories of epistemic relativism. I argue that it is possible to construct a theory of knowledge that is both experientially situated and subjected to a regulative standard of validity. To this purpose, I adopt some of the basic processes of categorization proposed by cognitive linguistics and I extend Kant’s reflective judgment to the epistemic domain. This strategy allows to support Davidson’s views against total incommensurability, but it also develops alternative reasons to explain why this is so. All in all, the chapter set the initial ground to reject forms of epistemic under determination which would undermine the possibility of constructing public truth of human rights.
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En este trabajo se presenta los rasgos generales de la concepción neoaristotélica de la racionalidad práctica que Alasdair MacIntyre busca defender a lo largo de su obra. Esto es fácilmente rastreable en sus principales escritos de madurez y gana una franca centralidad en su último libro, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity. A partir de esta caracterización, en un segundo momento se trazan algunas de las consecuencias epistemológicas y metodológicas que adoptar una concepción así tendría para las ciencias sociales empíricas. Éstas no pueden permanecer indiferentes a las discusiones en el campo de la filosofía práctica y, de hecho, suelen llevar aparejados compromisos antropológicos y filosóficos implícitos, pero no reconocidos. A través de algunos ejemplos tomados de la ciencia política se muestra que buena parte de los enfoques dominantes en estas disciplinas aún se muestran insensibles a la crítica adelantada por MacIntyre y otros.
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This chapter examines the difficulties legal positivism faces explaining the formation and content of peremptory norms. On the one hand, these norms have a universal, peremptory and non-derogable character, based on the importance of their content, which appears to be in tension with the positivist vision of international law as an artificial creation, grounded on state sovereignty and consent. On the other hand, there is the seemingly paradoxical claim that peremptory norms arise from state practice, requiring acceptance and recognition by the international community as a whole. Unravelling this paradox, requires an explanation that reaches beyond the formal sources of international law, to the normative social foundations for international legal order and obligation. The chapter argues that this requires an enquiry into the social foundations for legal obligation as such, which runs counter to the methodological underpinnings of legal positivism, and touches upon the necessary moral foundations to any legal system. An adequate justification of peremptory norms in any legal order requires the setting aside of mistaken understandings of the relationship between social practice, reasons and rules within the positivist tradition; and the recovery of an account of norms constitutive of social cooperation to achieve common ends. With that recovery, the chapter explores some workable foundations for understanding peremptory norms, as ethical foundations to legal order and evaluative criteria for the integration of global, transnational and national legal orders.
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This paper uses the example of circus to illustrate the relationship between self-understanding and social order that underscores MacIntyre’s diagnoses of developments in mainstream moral and self-understanding. ‘Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity’ provides a largely sociological account as to why the distinctive and incoherent Morality of modernity persists, and moreover must persist, if the illusions of the conventional social order are to be maintained. MacIntyre’s allusions to such contexts as the circus manifest the same intimate relationship between self-understanding and social order, but in contrast to modernity, provide a context for coherence.
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p>La Encíclica Laudato Si’ del Papa Francisco no solo realiza importantes afi rmaciones acerca de las cuestiones ambientales, sino que ofrece también indicaciones muy significativas para la adecuada comprensión de cuestiones antropológicas y éticas relevantes, en particular la ley natural. El presente trabajo intenta mostrar estos aportes y abrir horizontes de diálogo entre la tradición clásica y las posiciones actuales</p
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This chapter opens the second part of this enquiry with the aim of modelling a new frame for the understanding of the validity of human rights. While in the first two chapters I investigated the difficulties arising from relativism and objectivism in morality and knowledge, and proposed possible directions of investigation therein, here I consider how a normatively acceptable judgmental activity on human rights can be advanced without falling into the two aforementioned competing extremisms. I do so by highlighting how the generalized condition of purposive agency implies that of communicative action, that is, I elaborate how the condition for the realization of one’s goals requires a preliminary condition of social coordination in order to be fulfilled.
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So far I have defended an epistemic perspective which rests between the two extreme poles of cognitive objectivism and relativism. While rejecting any approach that strays from a situated critical perspective of evaluation, I have also underscored the incoherencies arising from any theory which renounces the formulation of any normative force from within an experiential perspective of reflection. In this chapter, I further investigate my initial insights by extending the scope of the proposed approach to the moral and political realm. For this reason, in the following I consider the challenge that moral relativism and objectivism present to any pretension of universality in morality, while maintaining the objective of formulating an initial frame of understanding for a non objectivist and a non relativist justification of human rights principles.
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The premise of this book has been based on a major shift in economic, cultural and political power from the twentieth “American Century” to the twenty first “Asian Century”. Significant changes are likely to take place, and business leaders are challenged to adapt to a dawn of a new era. The most obvious challenge involves the need to identify key competitive opportunities and threats in the Asian Century. China has dethroned the US as the leading automobile manufacturer (Meredith 2009). While the US struggles to resolve budget-deficit issues, China and India in particular are steadily growing as economic and political superpowers. Asia is home to 60 % of global population, and by 2028, India is set to overtake China as the most populated country (Population Reference Bureau 2014). In the last 20 years, China and India have tripled their output into the global economy (Australian Government White Paper 2012). It is estimated that by 2025, Asia will produce almost half the world’s output, and will be the largest consumer and producer. In 2012, based on the sum of exports and imports of goods, China became the world’s biggest trading nation, surpassing the US (Bloomberg 2013). In 2012, US exports/imports of goods amounted to 3.82trillion;Chinasamountedto3.82 trillion; China’s amounted to 3.87 trillion (Bloomberg 2013). China is the largest energy consumer, the world’s largest new-car market and has the largest foreign-currency reserves.
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What can be learned from a small scale study of managerial work in a highly marginal and under-researched working community? This article uses the ‘goods–virtues–practices–institutions’ framework to examine the managerial work of owner–directors of traditional circuses. Inspired by MacIntyre’s arguments for the necessity of a narrative understanding of the virtues, interviews explored how British and Irish circus directors accounted for their working lives. A purposive sample was used to select subjects who had owned and managed traditional touring circuses for at least 15 years, a period in which the economic and reputational fortunes of traditional circuses have suffered badly. This sample enabled the research to examine the self-understanding of people who had, at least on the face of it, exhibited the virtue of constancy. The research contributes to our understanding of the role of the virtues in organizations by presenting evidence of an intimate relationship between the virtue of constancy and a ‘calling’ work orientation. This enhances our understanding of the virtues that are required if management is exercised as a domain-related practice.
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