After Relativism: Alasdair MacIntyre on Tradition and Rationality

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After Relativism:Alasdair MacIntyre on Tradition and Rationality Olli-Pekka Vainio In debates, it is common to summon the concept of "reason" or "rationality" as neutral arbiters. However, there is something problematic in this proposal, as it erroneously suggests that rationality is something completely self-evident, transparent, and free from interpretation.1 Over the course of history, all the great words, including "reason" and its derivatives have been dressed in a wide variety of garments. Moreover, is it not often at the heart of the disagreement that we disagree over what is in fact rational? Providing rationality as a solution to the problem of rationality does not seem to help us much.2 One of the key themes of Alasdair MacIntyre's career has been to analyze this conundrum.3 His influential and much discussed works After Virtue [End Page 315] (1981), Whose Justice? Which Tradition? (1988), and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (1990) are reviews of the history of Western philosophy that attempt to uncover the connections of given ideals of rationality with particular traditions.4 In this way he provides a critique of the Enlightenment type of reason that presents itself as free from all traditions, and as thus being universal. However, the mere critique of the Enlightenment is often taken to be a concealed argument for relativism. If rationality is born within and bound by a tradition, is the truth also defined by the criteria adopted by each community? In this article, I will look at MacIntyre's views that are related to the problem of relativism. My focus is on the Thomistic philosophy of his late career, through which he seeks to complement the shortcomings of his previous thinking. Incipient Thomism is already part of Whose Justice? and Three Rival Versions, but only in his essays and other works written since the late 1990s does MacIntyre present his theory of knowledge more accurately. MacIntyre's thinking has evolved from the communitarian sociology of knowledge towards Thomistic realism. His Thomistic turn can be seen as an answer to the accusations of relativism, but does this mean that his system devolves into conservatism and authoritarianism, as some of his critics have argued? Or will relativism continue to bother MacIntyre's system?5 Reason and History For MacIntyre, rationality is not an abstract principle or an allegedly neutral method, but a complex and ever-evolving set of arguments. Rationality is holistic: it is not just about individual claims, for it is comprehensively linked to a whole group of beliefs through which the [End Page 316] individual perceives his place in reality and evaluates what a good life should be.6 MacIntyre sums up the idea of tradition-based rationality as follows: "There is no standing ground, no place for enquiry, no way to engage in the practices of advancing, evaluating, accepting, and rejecting reasoned argument apart from that which is provided by some particular tradition or other."7 In other words, arguments do not float in the air, for they are always related to the history of each community. Traditions are "socially embodied arguments."8 As a result, "to justify is to narrate how the argument has gone so far."9 According to the ideal of the Enlightenment, rationality is something that exists outside traditions, while MacIntyre argues that rationality is always internal to a tradition. If the Enlightenment view were true, we should have some universal means of dealing with differences between various traditions by relying on this general principle of rationality. However, according to MacIntyre, we have good reason to consider this notion to be wrong, because no philosopher who has followed the Enlightenment view has been able to tell us what these generally accepted principles are—or to provide us with a generally accepted interpretation of these principles.10 In other words, according to MacIntyre's critique, the Enlightenment is a failed project according to its own criteria. The Enlightenment not only failed to define commonly agreed principles; it also made it much more difficult to have a debate on the nature of such principles. The reason for this is that it offers a too simple and totalizing idea of what is rational, which is...