METAPHILOSOPHY Vol. 20, Nos. 3 & 4, July/October 1989 0026-1068 $2.00

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ALASDAIR MACINTYRE, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? University of Notre Dame Press, 1988, 410pp

Near the end of After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre indicated that to defend his claims in that book would require asking “in a systematic way what the appropriate rational procedures are for settling this particular kind of dispute. . . . My negative and positive evaluations of particular arguments do indeed presuppose a systematic, although here unstated, account of rationality . . . to be given in a subsequent book” (242).’ Whose Justice? Which Rationality? is the subsequent book. But I am not confident that he has now shown us the appropriate rational procedures for settling the dispute. First I will state the general outline of his argument, and his central theses about the appropriate rational procedures. Then I will raise some potential difficulties with his theses, and suggest the direction MacIntyre needs to go, if I am correct, to avoid or remedy such difficulties.

MacIntyre argues that recent moral philosophy seems stalemated over rival accounts of what it is to be practically rational; it also seems stalemated over rival accounts of justice. He explores the genesis of this stalemate. What he has found is that underlying rival theories of justice are competing conceptions of practical rationality. When a citizen of a modern state is asked to treat others justly, the question arises: Whose justice? Or when one is asked to act rationally, the question is: Which rationality? Not only are theories of justice inseparable from theories of practical rationality, both are inseparable from and informed by equally diverse traditions of enquiry: what MacIntyre calls “tradition-constituted and tradition-constitutive enquiry”. Such enquiry is the promised rational enquiry for settling the central disputes in moral philosophy.

MacIntyre explains four components of such enquiry (8-10):

“The concept of rational justification which is at home in that form of enquiry to essentially historical. To justify is to narrate how the argument has gone so far.” Thus his arguments take narrative form. He narrates the history and transformations of the concepts of justice and of practical rationality in four traditions: Aristotelianism, Augustinian Christianity, Scottish enlightenment, and modern liberalism. MacIntyre’s work shows learned scholarship, attention to texts, and respect for traditions of criticism and commentary.

(2) “Doctrines, theses, and arguments all have to be understood in

’ After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).

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terms of historical context.” What a doctrine claims, and what entailments are permissible is a matter of the historical context of the doctrine. MacIntyre does not divorce social history from the history of philosophy.

(3) Historical narrative of the diversity of traditions both better characterizes the cause for the diversity (and does in no wise imply relativism), and provides a beginning for resolving the diversity.

(4) “The concept of tradition-constituted and tradition-constitutive rational enquiry cannot be elucidated apart from its exemplifica- tions.” Thus the only way to disclose a tradition of enquiry is by narrative form. And that is precisely what Machtyre does with style, eloquence, and lucidity in much of his book.

Given that concepts, doctrines, and theses all have a history, is any historical exemplification of them superior or inferior to any of the others? Nietzsche can be taken as asserting “no, they are all equally simply expressions of some will or other.” MacIntyre argues that there can be progress or regress within a tradition of enquiry, and gives four characteristics of progress toward a goal in enquiry (79ff). First, “some at least of the later stages [of enquiry] would afford us a point of view from which it would be possible to identify and to characterize the findings of earlier stages in a way in which that would not have been possible at those stages”. Second, “the latter stages provide a theory of error and falsity to account for inadequacy at earlier stages”. Third, ‘‘successive retrospective examinations of the enquiry so far would provide fuller accounts of the goal of the enquiry, and in turn successive characterizations of that goal would furnish stronger grounds for directing the enquiry in one way rather than another”. Fourth, “this gradually enriched conception of the goal is a conception of what it would be to have completed the enquiry”. This view of teleological progress in enquiry is compatible both with the view that there is an achievable tefos of the enquiry, and that there might not be such a telos.

These characteristics describe progress within a tradition, by which we could judge whether some moment in a tradition was an advance or otherwise over previous moments in that tradition of enquiry. How, though, are we to decide which of two rival and competing traditions are superior, or what, for such rivals, could “superior” mean? MacIntyre has argued throughout his narrative, and particularly in his discussion of modern liberalism, that there is no neutral and impartial (that is to say, absolute) standpoint outside of all traditions by which to adjudicate the rational superiority of competing traditions. Whenever a tradition of enquiry is evaluated, it is always from some standing ground: “there is no set of independent standards of rational justification by appeal to which the issues between contending traditions can be decided” (351).

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One attempt to dissolve this problem is to adopt relativism: there can be no rationality as such; there is only my rationality and yours. Another attempt to dissolve such difficulties is to adopt perspectivism: there is no truth or falsity as such; different traditions are simply complementary perspective on reality. MacIntyre rejects both of those alternatives and argues for an account by which one can evaluate competing traditions.

The road to recognizing the superiority between or among rival traditions of enquiry is by paying attention to the occurrence of an epistemological crisis - a “dissolution of historically founded certitudes” - whose solution “requires the invention or discovery of new concepts and the framing of some new type or types of theory” (362). The new concepts and theory must: (a) “furnish a solution to the problems which had previously proved intractable in a systematic and coherent way”; (b) “provide an explanation of just what it was which rendered the tradition, before it had acquired these new resources, sterile or incoherent or both”; and (c) “these first two tasks must be carried out in a way which exhibits some fundamental continuity of the new conceptual and theoretical structures with the shared beliefs in terms of which the tradition of enquiry had been defined up to this point” (362). Epistemological crises can occur either within a tradition, or between traditions which encounter each other as rival or alien. MacIntyre wants us to see requirements (a-c) as furnishing us with the criteria both for progress within a tradition, and for the superiority among or between competing traditions (by learning the language of the competing tradition as a second first language - cf. 364, 374f, 394f).

Thus I take the central theses of WJ? WR? to be threefold. First, the proper mode of enquiry is tradition-constituted and tradition-constitutive narrative (8-10). Second, there are identifiable characteristics for progress within a tradition of rational enquiry (79-81). Third, evidence for the superiority among rival and competing traditions is found in their solutions to epistemological crises (355-369).

I have some difficulties with MacIntyre’s theses. If the only way to disclose a tradition of enquiry is by narrative form, and this is best done by giving the kind of account that an adherent of that tradition would give (cf. 401), how are we to accept Muclntyre’s historical narrative account (from a self-professed Augustinian Christian - 10f; or at the end, a Thomist - 402f) - which account I have not discussed here - of Aristotelianism, the Scottish enlightenment, and modern liberalism? Can the scholar participate in such “schizophrenia” and have such a plurality of second first languages as to be now an adherent of Aristotelianism, now of Augustinian Christianity, now of Scottish enlightenment, now of modern liberalism? Can MacIntyre give, for example, the kind of narrative account of the Scottish enlightenment that an adherent - if there are any left - of that tradition of enquiry would? Or are we to read the historical narrative portions of WJ? WR?

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as an Augustinian Christian’s account of a set of traditions (and so not written as adherents of those other traditions would)? It should not be surprising if, in the end, the Augustinian Christian tradition looks most intellectually and rationally respectable in WJ? WR? But it surely seems to be the case that adherents of other traditions could write their accounts of these same traditions, and of course their own tradition should, one would suppose, come out on top.

In defense of MacIntyre I think he might say that we could not be assured of such relativist or perspectivist claims - that each tradition of enquiry could write its own coherent version of WJ? WR? - in advance. What each tradition - including the Augustinian ChristianiThomist - would need to do is to actually write their narrative. Only after, and not before, we are presented with their narratives of these traditions could we begin to decide. Apparently MacIntyre sees WJ? WR? as giving the argument for how one is to proceed in moral philosophy beyond the current stalemate over the chimera of impartiality of reason, but not as giving an apology of the Augustinian ChristianiThomist tradition against other relevant rival and competing traditions of enquiry in moral philosophy. Anyone who thinks MacIntyre is giving such an apology (and if MacIntyre were, he should be seen as failing) is seriously mistaken in their understanding of MacIntyre’s aims and central theses.

Hence it seems to me that another book should be in the offing. WJ? WR? has demonstrated the source of the difficulties for finding appropriate rational procedures to settle disputes among rival traditions, indeed why disputes about such procedures seem - in large measure due to modern liberalism’s vain search for neutrality and impartiality - interminable. Yet MacIntyre has carried the argument considerably farther than he could in After Virtue. He has argued for an account of how to make progress in such disputes, an account which aims to avoid relativism, perspectivism, and dogmatism. With WJ? WR? he has left himself a project for a sequel: to defend dialectically against all relevant rivals an account of rational procedures for settling disputes in moral philosophy. WJ? WR? gives the outline of an account (8-10,79-81,355- 369), but not the dialectical defense.

Moreover, to continue MacIntyre’s narrative also requires a dialectical defense of the Augustinian ChristianRhomist account of justice and practical reasoning against relevant rival and competing traditions of enquiry in moral philosophy. The conclusions of WJ? WR? are tentative. To say this is no criticism of the book. Rather it shows its richness by setting the course for continued argument.2

Eric W. Snider University of Toledo Toledo, OH 436063390 USA ’ I thank the University of Toledo Office of Research for a generous grant which

supported my work on this essay.