Franco Manni

Interview with Alasdair MacIntyre

Intervista a Alasdair MacIntyre

 

 

 

Il 21 Maggio 2025 è morto negli USA lo studioso scozzese di filosofia Alasdair MacIntyre.

Egli è stato apprezzato ed è diventato famoso per il suo libro del 1981 After Virtue che fu molto influente per ‘rivelare’ l’etica aristotelica delle virtù a un mondo accademico occidentale che la ignorava, e che seguiva o Kant o Bentham in maniera poco critica e poco informata.

Quando lessi la traduzione italiana di questo libro fatta nel 1993, essa non mi fece alcuna impressione positiva ma piuttosto una negativa, in quanto io conoscevo già da anni l’etica aristotelico-tomista in maniera assai più profonda e sistematica di quella presente nel libro di MacIntyre, grazie a Sofia Vanni Rovighi.

Invece io apprezzo MacIntyre e lo ritengo un vero filosofo per altri due motivi:

1) la sua esplorazione intelligente e documentata di come l’Etica deve connettere necessariamente l’individuo alla comunità, questa idea solamente in nuce è presente nei filosofi antichi e medievali, è ignota ai filosofi moderni ed è tornata ed è stata pian piano sviluppata solo in alcuni filosofi contemporanei, di cui il migliore è MacIntyre (si veda il suo Whose Justice? Which Rationality? del 1988);

2) il suo fare filosofia come volevano Hegel e Croce e cioè solamente attraverso la Storia della Filosofia, consiglio a questo proposito il suo God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition del 2011.

Ho potuto tornare a leggere MacIntyre e ad apprezzarlo nonostante la delusione del suo celebrato After Virtue, a causa del mio studio del filosofo inglese Herbert McCabe che feci per il mio PhD al King’s College, e da cui nel 2020 è uscito un libro negli USA.

Per questo mio studio nel 2016 intervistai Alasdair MacIntyre via email (lui viveva già negli USA ), in quanto sapevo che i due si conoscevano, si erano incontrati a lungo nel passato e si apprezzavano a vicenda.

On 21 May 2025, the Scottish philosophical scholar Alasdair MacIntyre died in the USA.

He was appreciated and became famous for his 1981 book After Virtue, which was very influential in "revealing" Aristotelian virtue ethics to a Western academic world that ignored it, and followed either Kant or Bentham in an uncritical and uninformed manner.

When I read the Italian translation of this book made in 1993, it did not make any positive impression on me, but rather a negative one, since I had already known Aristotelian-Thomistic ethics for years in a much deeper and more systematic way than in MacIntyre's book, thanks to what philosopher Sofia Vanni Rovighi had taught to me.

Instead, I appreciate MacIntyre and consider him a true philosopher for two other reasons:

1) his intelligent and well-documented exploration of how Ethics must necessarily connect the individual to the community, this idea only in nuce is present in ancient and medieval philosophers, it is unknown to modern philosophers and has only returned and been slowly developed in some contemporary philosophers, of which the best is MacIntyre (see his 1988 Whose Justice? Which Rationality?);

2) his doing philosophy the way Hegel and Croce wanted, i.e. only through the History of Philosophy, I recommend in this regard his God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition of 2011.

I was able to return to reading MacIntyre and appreciating him despite the disappointment of his celebrated After Virtue, because of my study of the English philosopher Herbert McCabe that I did for my PhD at King's College, and from which a book came out in the US in 2020.

For this study of mine in 2016 I interviewed Alasdair MacIntyre by email (he was already living in the US), as I knew that the two knew each other, had met extensively in the past, and liked each other’s philosophical work.

 

Email di Franco Manni a Alasdair MacIntyre il 26 agosto 2016

 

Dear Professor McIntyre,

Thank you for your availability to dialogue. I apologise for my belated response, but I have been in Italy for a few weeks and therefore I was not able to pick up your letter at my English address.

Here are my questions:

    1. What were your relationships with McCabe?

    2. What McCabe’s writings did you read?

    3. In your opinion, were you influenced by McCabe’s thought? If you were, what were these influences about?

    4. In your opinion, was McCabe influenced by you? If he was, what were these influences about?

    5. Apart from Aquinas and Wittgenstein, if you know, which other authors influenced McCabe?

    6. How do you evaluate McCabe’s intellectual legacy? Was it effective among the philosophers? Was it effective among the theologians? Was it just confined to the Anglophone world? Is it more widespread among the common Christian readers than among the academics?

    7. In your opinion, does the fact that McCabe is not much studied in the academia come from the fact that McCabe was not an academic himself?

    8. In your opinion, was McCabe a significant concause of the Aquinas’ revival in the recent years among the Anglophone scholars? On Wikipedia I read : "McIntyre  has been described as a 'revolutionary  Aristotelian' because of his attempt to combine historical insights from his  Marxist  past with those of  Aquinas  and  Aristotle  after his conversion to  Catholicism. For  him,liberalism  and  postmodern  consumerism  not only justify capitalism but sustain and inform it over the long term. Since Marxism, Aquinas, Catholicism and critique of liberalism are features of McCabe’s life also, what do you think: were you and McCabe an exception within the intellectual environment of those decades, or , rather, was it quite common a path

      9. I read your book  Dependent Rational Animals  and I realised that there are close similarities with the ‘linguistic animals’ whom McCabe used to write about. I am aware that this stress on the animal nature of human beings is quite new and different from the previous 20th  century Neo-Thomism. What do you think about the causes of this shift?

      10. I read your book  God, Philosophy, Universities, a short history of the Catholic philosophical tradition, where you underline the importance of philosophical theology for the other parts of philosophy. As far as you know, did McCabe say anything original/interesting about philosophical theology?

       

      Email di Alasdair MacIntyre a Franco Manni il 28 agosto 2016

       

      Dear Franco Manni,

      I am delighted that you are finding it worthwhile to make your way through Herbert McCabe's very impressive body of work. I first met John Ignatius--not yet Herbert--McCabe in Manchester in 1949 just before he began his Dominican novitiate and just before I began graduate study in philosophy at Manchester University.

      I did not see him again until the Fall of 1982,when I gave the Carlyle Lectures at Oxford on 'Some Transformations of Justice'. He attended every lecture and each of the seminars that followed each lecture. We also had long discussions in various pubs.I took very strong note of his criticisms, as I acknowledge in the Preface to  Whose Justice? Which Rationality?  , the book that resulted from the Carlyle Lectures in 1988.

      These were the only two occasions on which I met Herbert. He had no further influence on me and I certainly had no influence at all on him.

      It is of course true that we acknowledged many of the same influences and came to be in substantial agreement on a range of central issues.We were both Dorothy Emmett's students,although neither of us held views anything like hers.We were both influenced by Elizabeth Anscombe and Peter Geach.

      But Herbert's preoccupations were those of a theologian, even if an unusually philosophically skilled theologian, whereas mine are those of an Aristotelian philosopher, even if I take Aquinas to be the most important interpreter of Aristotle.

      And we each drew on Wittgenstein's insights for our own purposes.You are right in emphasizing our shared view that human agents are language using animals, something not taken seriously in the NeoThomist tradition. But others, such as Robert Sokolowski, have also held this view and developed it impressively.

      I hope that some of these remarks are useful. Every good wish,

      Alasdair MacIntyre

       

      Interesse di MacIntyre per il mio libro su Herbert McCabe (email 9/7/2020)

      Dear Franco Manni,

      Thank you so very much for sending me your book on Herbert McCabe, which has only just reached me. I look forward to reading it with the greatest interest.

      Every good wish,

      Alasdair MacIntyre

       

      Endorsement di Alasdair MacIntyre per la quarta di copertina del mio libro su Herbert McCabe

       

      "What Manni provides here is indeed a guide to McCabe’s thought that no one else has written."

       

 

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