(OSV News) — In the Flannery O’Connor short story “Good Country People,” a mother ruefully wishes her offspring had chosen another career path than philosophy because, “You could not say, ‘My daughter is a philosopher.’ That was something that had ended with the Greeks and Romans.”
But Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (1929-2025) was indeed a modern philosopher and his study of virtue-based ethics saw Newsweek dub him in 1981 as “one of the foremost moral philosophers in the English-speaking world.”
In MacIntyre’s lifetime — which drew to a close May 21 after 96 years — he relentlessly stalked both the virtues and the truth across the disciplines of philosophy, theology and politics. For MacIntyre, ethics and morality weren’t merely a dusty collection of abstract rules, but a living tradition meant to vigorously inform and guide the individual and collective pursuit of the common good.
The de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame, where MacIntyre was a permanent senior distinguished research fellow, confirmed MacIntyre’s passing in a May 23 announcement.
“Widely regarded as the most important philosopher in modern virtue ethics, Alasdair MacIntyre demonstrated scholarly rigor and an alpine clarity of thought,” said Jennifer Newsome Martin, director of the de Nicola Center, as well as an associate professor in the Program of Liberal Studies and the Department of Theology.
“He was also a generous friend of the de Nicola Center,” Martin said in remarks she sent to OSV News. She said it was “an honor” MacIntyre chose the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture “to be the locus of his scholarly work after retiring from the philosophy department at Notre Dame.”
“We are all bereft at his passing,” she said.
“His tremendous legacy, however, will continue to reverberate in the life of the center,” she added, “especially in its historic emphasis on traditions-based inquiry, in the habits of virtuous thought and practice cultivated in our integral student formation program, and in the rich intellectual community and vigorous exchange of ideas for which his voice was so fundamental.”
Catholic Convert with Tremendous Impact
Born Jan. 12, 1929, in Glasgow, Scotland, to Gaelic-speaking Presbyterian doctors, Alasdair MacIntyre flirted with communism and analytical philosophy, became an Anglican and then an atheist. At last, in 1983, MacIntyre became a Catholic in the mold of what he termed a “Thomistic Aristotelian” — a hybrid of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas.
MacIntyre taught at numerous prestigious institutions — among them, multiple American universities (Brandeis, Boston, Duke, Princeton, Vanderbilt, Yale) and a college (Wellesley) — but the University of Notre Dame, where he was also an emeritus professor, was his final scholarly tenure.
“Alasdair MacIntyre’s widespread impact on the world of ideas is impossible to overstate. We will be reading and learning from him for centuries to come,” O. Carter Snead, former director of the de Nicola Center, who is a professor of law and concurrent professor of political science at Notre Dame, said in remarks he sent to OSV News.
Snead said he owed “a deep personal debt of gratitude” for MacIntyre’s generosity as a mentor and colleague. He recalled “Alasdair’s beautiful and inspiring personal concern for the flourishing of the people in his daily life.”
“In our many conversations over the years, he never missed an opportunity to inquire with genuine concern about my family and, in particular, our children,” Snead said. “I will miss him dearly.”
American book critic George Scialabba once observed of MacIntyre’s seminal 1981 work “After Virtue” — a philosophical critique applying classic Aristotelian thought to the ills of the modern age — that “no one, including MacIntyre, could have expected that such a difficult and abstract book would be so influential.”
“After Virtue” a Cornerstone Legacy of Alasdair MacIntyre
“After Virtue” became a cornerstone volume of the restored school of virtue ethics — morality as related to the habits and knowledge of how to live an intentionally good (virtuous) life — cycling through three editions, the most recent in 2007 (University of Notre Dame Press) being published with a new prologue. But “After Virtue” was only one among more than 20 books, and 200-plus scholarly articles, penned by MacIntyre.
“I think he was one of the most important figures of the 20th century in moral philosophy,” said John H. Garvey, president of The Catholic University of America from 2011-2022 and author of “The Virtues,” a 2022 book examining the role of moral formation in education.
“When I was in college, the study of ethics was divided between analytic philosophers who shied away from reaching important conclusions, and nihilists who thought there was nothing worth finding,” he told OSV News. “‘After Virtue’ presented an attractive alternative.”
That middle way, suggested Garvey, was an essential option.
“For many years, I taught a course called ‘The Virtues’ to freshmen in the Honors Program at Catholic University. I always had them read ‘After Virtue.’ I wanted students to come away from the course thinking, not ‘This, or that, is the right answer,'” Garvey said, “but (thinking), ‘That’s the way I’d like to live.’ MacIntyre makes you think that way.”
Alasdair MacIntyre Leaves Treasury of Wisdom
John Cuddeback — a professor of philosophy at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, whose “LifeCraft” educational site and podcast teaches on the philosophy of household life — agreed.
“Back in the ’90s, for us graduate students, aspiring intellectuals and young professors, MacIntyre was an utterly unique inspiration: Here is someone deeply conversant in contemporary philosophy who has recognized in the Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition a treasury of wisdom,” he told OSV News.
“He wonderfully combined a docility to tradition with a passion to speak to the people of our age,” Cuddeback added. “‘After Virtue’ will stand as a landmark to return to again and again for generations to come.”
Ultimately, McIntyre’s philosophy — while densely packed and commonly requiring an undeniable intellectual rigor to approach — is nonetheless grounded in eminent practicality.
“I can only answer the question, ‘What am I to do?'” he wrote in ‘After Virtue’ three decades earlier, “if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?'”
Kimberely Heatherington writes for OSV News from Virginia.
