Either (Nietzsche) / Or (Aristotle)? Macintyre's modernity and the enduring relevance of Kierkegaard

Abstract

AbstractThis essay situates Alasdair MacIntyre's typology of moral enquiry in Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry relative to his critique of Søren Kierkegaard in After Virtue to offer an alternative reading of Kierkegaard's Either/Or to the one MacIntyre proposes. The essay shows that MacIntyre's reading of Kierkegaard's Either/Or fails to register that in important respects Kierkegaard's counterpoint of rival perspectives in Either/Or bears striking resemblance to the scenario of mutual antagonisms that MacIntyre identifies among the genres of genealogy, encyclopaedia, and tradition‐informed moral enquiry. The essay then proposes a reading of Either/Or that implicitly questions not just the approach of the encyclopaedists, but also the approach of all genealogists of modernity (including the genealogy of Friedrich Nietzsche). Finally, contrary to MacIntyre's unfortunate judgement that “Kierkegaard's doctrine” is “at once the outcome and the epitaph of the Enlightenment's systematic attempt to discover a rational justification for morality,” the essay argues instead that what we can learn from Kierkegaard has been and ought to remain of enduring relevance for “tradition‐informed” philosophical and theological thinking in modernity.