Alasdair MacIntyre
An Intellectual Biography
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- £25.99
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- £25.99
Publisher Description
This award-winning biography, now available for the first time in English, presents an illuminating introduction to Alasdair MacIntyre and locates his thinking in the intellectual milieu of twentieth-century philosophy.
Winner of the prestigious 2005 Philippe Habert Prize, the late Émile Perreau-Saussine’s Alasdair MacIntyre: Une biographie intellectuelle stands as a definitive introduction to the life and work of one of today’s leading moral philosophers. With Nathan J. Pinkoski’s translation, this long-awaited, critical examination of MacIntyre’s thought is now available to English readers for the first time, including a foreword by renowned philosopher Pierre Manent.
Amid the confusions and contradictions of our present philosophical landscape, few have provided the clarity of thought and shrewdness of diagnosis like Alasdair MacIntyre. In this study, Perreau-Saussine guides his readers through MacIntyre’s lifelong project by tracking his responses to liberalism’s limitations in light of the human search for what is good and true in politics, philosophy, and theology. The portrait that emerges is one of an intellectual giant who comes to oppose modern liberal individualism’s arguably singular focus on averting evil at the expense of a concerted pursuit of human goods founded upon moral and practical reasoning. Although throughout his career MacIntyre would engage with a number of theoretical and practical standpoints in service of his critique of liberalism, not the least of which was his early and later abandoned dalliance with Marxism, Perreau-Saussine convincingly shows how the Scottish philosopher came to hold that Aristotelian Thomism provides the best resources to counter what he perceives as the failure of the liberal project. Readers of MacIntyre’s works, as well as scholars and students of moral philosophy, the history of philosophy, and theology, will find this translation to be an essential addition to their collection.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Perreau-Saussine (Catholicism and Democracy), who lectured in politics and international studies at the University of Cambridge and published this title in France in 2005 before his death in 2010, provides a penetrating overview of the ideas of 20th-century moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. Perreau-Saussine focuses on how MacIntyre's critiques of liberalism developed and summarizes the key insight of MacIntyre's philosophy: "Limited to his own strength, the individual is not always able to find the good and the true to which he aspires." As a young man, MacIntyre professed leftist political engagements that ended in disillusionment after the decline of Stalinism, causing the philosopher to disavow politics and "root freedom in natural law and faith." Perreau-Saussine traces how Marxist antipathy toward liberal individualism continued to influence MacIntyre's thinking, leading the philosopher to write extensively on how liberalism's emphasis on personal freedoms leads to a dangerous moral relativism. MacIntyre converted to Catholicism in 1983, a decision that Perreau-Saussine attributes to the philosopher's increasing interest in tradition and its ability to foster reason and a positive sense of justice. Perreau-Saussine proves a talented historian of ideas, cogently elucidating how such diverse traditions as Marxism, Catholicism, and Aristotelianism come together in MacIntyre's writings. Political and moral philosophy scholars will want to check this out.
