15 Alasdair MacIntyre: Closet Liberal

For all the trees that have died in service of explicating and understanding MacIntyre’s thought, there is one conclusion that does not appear in dispute: MacIntyre is not fond of liberalism. MacIntyre believes that liberalism’s ostensible neutrality has quite simply shattered the Western moral tradition. We who live in the wake of its destruction are left unable to even talk about the truth or the good, let alone make progress in living a good life or building a good society. What is more, MacIntyre insists that liberalism is not neutral. It assumes and celebrates individualism and acquisitiveness, and that, too, accounts for his distaste.

Of course, MacIntyre’s critique goes beyond liberalism; he is convinced that all of modernity is bankrupt. But it is also true that for MacIntyre modernity and liberalism are practically synonymous. In Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, he writes:

My objective in this brief response is to try to, in Peter Berkowitz’s words, give liberalism its due. I want to outline a series of responses that arise from Porter’s analysis, which I hope raise another perspective on MacIntyre’s account of the problem and his strategy for dealing with it. I suggest that that very strategy may lead us to reevaluate MacIntyre’s criticisms of liberalism and perhaps even the commensurability between the two.

As I noted, Porter says that one of the main points of MacIntyre’s recent work is to find a path between discredited Enlightenment rationalism and an ethical relativism that can say nothing meaningful at all about morality. MacIntyre seeks to find another way to defend the possibility of meaningful speech regarding moral disagreements. To that end, we must recover a kind of critical but intra-traditional reflection that might bring us out of our parochial redoubts and into genuine and perhaps even productive conversation.

Reading this account, MacIntyre’s position sounds very similar to the one staked out by that archetypal liberal, Isaiah Berlin. Like MacIntyre, Berlin thinks that moral pluralism is irreducible. To speak in any way of resolving moral problems is beyond the pale and all of human history stands as an incontrovertible counter argument. But Berlin, as well, rejects the notion that this means that rational decision-making about moral questions is impossible. Such decisions are radically contingent, but they are hardly a-rational. They are invariably more or less justifiable, and for that matter, more or less successful. Similarly, Berlin holds that it is unreasonable to believe that limited progress on moral questions—either within or between moral traditions—is impossible. To say that we do not and never will agree on everything does not mean we cannot come to meaningful agreement about some things. Nor, finally, does Berlin think that we must tolerate all moral choices. Liberalism is not foundationalism, but neither is it skepticism; some goods are basic, and some choices are simply ruled out.[2]

In this context, I must content myself with this brief and undocumented summary. Perhaps some Berlin scholars would dispute this account. But none, I trust, would dispute that the above account is viable within the confines of liberal political theory. And if that is true, then it is worth accounting for the similarities between MacIntyre and Berlin, as well as the significant difference that remains. When it comes to their understanding of the possibilities and limits of moral reasoning, Berlin’s and MacIntyre’s views are very similar. But despite this agreement, Berlin believes liberalism—both the political system and the philosophical disposition—is best able to accommodate this reality. MacIntyre, on the contrary, has argued that liberalism stands as an adversary to any viable solution to the modern predicament. It is worth asking what accounts for this strong difference of opinion, and whether Berlin’s conclusions might not cause one to reconsider MacIntyre’s.

These unacknowledged sympathies extend not just to what MacIntyre says is needed, but to the kinds of individual dispositions he thinks are most likely to make it happen. In Porter’s account, MacIntyre says that, in order to develop an intra-traditional form of rational criticism, individuals must be willing to imaginatively enter another tradition. Only those who understand the tradition-bound dimension of their own beliefs and thoughts, but who can nevertheless strive to understand the tradition that informs the beliefs and thoughts of another, can facilitate a fruitful exchange. Well, what kind of person, what kind of life history, values, etc., would best be able and willing to take seriously another way of looking at the world? My suspicion is that it’s someone who has learned to be tolerant, that is, someone for whom tolerance is part of his or her tradition. G. K. Chesterton said that tolerance is a virtue for people who don’t believe in anything, and he didn’t mean it as a compliment. I suspect that MacIntyre shares this low opinion. But the point is that while there is surely some merit to this criticism—that is, to the idea that liberals are non-committal to a fault—the flip side of this criticism is that liberals are by disposition and training able to consider other possibilities, to see things from another point of view, and the like. Now again, based on what Porter has to say about MacIntyre, this very ability is essential if his strategy is to succeed. One must therefore wonder if his complete rejection of liberalism is either warranted or prudent.

Indeed, there is a certain irony to MacIntyre’s objectives. For it is almost as if the price for admission to this possible path beyond relativism is the ability to provisionally but not thoroughly relativize one’s one tradition. One must be able and willing to occupy the ever-shifting middle ground between unquestioning belief in the superiority of one’s moral tradition, and an almost insouciant belief that there is no accounting for moral taste.[3] If I am right that MacIntyre is likewise arguing that both of these alternatives are problematic, even unacceptable, then who is best able to pull off this balancing act? It seems to me that here again liberals are better disposed to take up the challenge that MacIntyre throws down. Liberals have strong beliefs—MacIntyre would be the first to agree with that—but they also understand that in a pluralistic and incommensurable world, it is imprudent and irrational to assume that you have exclusive access to the truth, or that you have nothing to learn from your interlocutor.[4]

Porter says that proponents of one tradition can acknowledge that other traditions, by their own criteria, offer a more adequate opinion of reality, at least in some aspects. In other words, one might consider other traditions not as alternatives, but only insofar as they might help one address those parts of one’s tradition that are judged most inadequate or unconvincing. Call it moral cherry picking, if you will. I suspect that this sort of thing goes on all the time, and I expect is goes on most frequently in liberal societies. Allow me to offer a very quotidian example. When my children were infants, I remember reading about the reaction of Africans to our practice of putting infants down in their beds alone. They thought it was terribly unkind, if not barbaric and even cruel. I would never consider taking an African tradition as my own, never even consider it possible, but I did think long and hard about that, especially as I was dealing with the “epistemological crisis” of my babies getting through the first night of getting themselves to sleep. My point is that if we really are talking about assimilating “some aspects” of another tradition into one’s own, it might not require some heroic moral imagination if your tradition already brings you half way there. Liberals understand that their tradition is the product of an ongoing moral bricolage; it works rather well but it can always be made better, can always be tinkered with. Again, according to MacIntyre’s own terms, I think liberals might be predisposed to engage the project he outlines.

Finally, there is the matter of liberal institutions. To will the end is to will the means. MacIntyre correctly notes that to support the development of strong, self-conscious moral traditions is to acknowledge and even laud the indispensable role that authority must play in developing and sustaining that tradition. And Porter is correct to note that this is precisely where liberals identify MacIntyre as an adversary. But it is one thing to argue that authority is indispensable. It is quite another to argue that because of this indispensability, any argument against the restrictions authority places (on thoughts, words, or actions) is inherently less reasonable than strict obedience. It sounds to me like that or something close to it is what MacIntyre is saying, and if so, liberals are to my mind correct to disassociate themselves from such notions.

If liberals are too slow to acknowledge the necessity of authority, non-liberals are too quick to gloss over the almost inevitable misuse of that authority. Surely MacIntyre would recognize instances in which authority has precluded the very kind of self-critical reflection that he judges to be essential. Perhaps it is worth trying to find a middle ground here, as well. If one were to ask whether there were institutional arrangements that best accommodated both concerns, wouldn’t it almost certainly include some kind of separation of powers, a system of individual rights and freedoms, and some notion of subsidiarity (i.e., the principle of giving those affected by a problem control over the solution)? Here again, these are obviously elements that liberal democratic societies already possess. And here again, it seems to me that one is justified in asking why MacIntyre’s rejection of liberalism is so complete, and how he purports to achieve and maintain the tradition-constitutive inquiry even in the midst of that rejection.

In sum, I think liberalism comes off a lot better in Professor Porter’s account of MacIntyre than he himself would like. More to the point, as far as I can see, this result stems from Porter’s presentation of his own analysis. MacIntyre’s argument for tradition-based moral inquiry speaks to the utility and even the legitimacy of the many central liberal virtues, dispositions, and institutions. If he insists on rejecting liberalism in toto, he ought to say how one might otherwise develop those virtues, dispositions and institutions. Indeed, he might consider whether this rejection undermines the effort to move beyond the very problems that so occupy his thought.