Alasdair MacIntyre

Alasdair MacIntyre is the philosopher most responsible for the revival of virtue ethics in analytic philosophy. After Virtue, published in 1981, mounted a devastating critique of Enlightenment moral philosophy, arguing that modern ethics is a collection of incompatible fragments from traditions that have lost their intelligibility—and that only a return to Aristotelian teleology could restore coherent moral discourse.

MacIntyre's later trilogy extended this argument into epistemology, defending a tradition-bound conception of rational enquiry and arguing that traditions are not prisons but the only context in which reasoning is possible. A convert to Catholicism and Thomism, he sought to synthesise Aristotle, Aquinas, and elements of Marxist social analysis into a comprehensive critique of liberal individualism and the emotivism he saw underlying contemporary moral culture.