Whose justice? Which rationality? / Alasdair MacIntyre. [print]

Rival justices, competing rationalities -- Justice and action in the Homeric imagination -- The division of the post-Homeric inheritance -- Athens put to the question -- Plato and rational enquiry -- Aristotle as Plato's heir -- Aristotle on justice -- Aristotle on practical rationality -- The Augustinian alternative -- Overcoming a conflict of traditions -- Aquinas on practical rationality and justice -- The Augustinian and Aristotelian background to Scottish Enlightenment -- Philosophy in the Scottish social order -- Hutcheson on justice and practical rationality -- Hume's anglicizing subversion -- Hume on practical rationality and justice -- Liberalism transformed into a tradition -- The rationality of traditions -- Tradition and translation -- Contested justices, contested rationalities.

Is there any cause or war worth risking one's life for? How can we determine which actions are vices and which virtues? MacIntyre, professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University, unravels these and other such questions by linking the concept of justice to what he calls practical rationality. He rejects the grab-what-you-can, utilitarian yardstick adopted by moral relativists. Instead, he argues that four wholly different, incompatible ideas of justice put forth by Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas and Hume have helped shape our modern individualistic world. In his unorthodox view, each person seeks the good through an ongoing dialogue with one of these traditions or within Jewish, non-Western or other historical traditions. This weighty sequel to After Virtue (1981) is certain to stir debate.

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