Storicismo e realismo nel pensiero di Alasdair Macintyre

摘要

My aim, in this work, is to analyze Alasdair MacIntyre’s theoretical system. MacIntyre (1929-) is audScottisch born and American ‘adopted’ philosopher. Critics usually framed his moral position asudrepresentative of current normative ethics of virtue inspired from Aristotle, and his political thoughtudas conservative, seeing as how they consider MacIntyre as neo-comunitarian thinker. But, as I haveudtried to show, this is a misunderstanding of his political position.udAnyway critics omits methodological aspect of macintyrean thought. For this reason, re-writing theudhistory of modernity, exposed not only in After Virtue but also in others papers, this work show theudtheoretical path that drove Scottish philosopher, also through comparison with the philosophy ofudscience, to build a new method of enquiry that is opposed to the explanatory-predictive methodudpursued by the ‘academic orthodoxy’. Indeed, this methodology, according to MacIntyre, omitsudhistory from philosophical enquiry and so brought our contemporary culture into a state of abysmaludcrisis: the ‘disquieting suggestion’.udSince following efforts to provide a solution for the moral disagreement have failed, it wasudnecessary to pinpoint another philosophical outlook to solve moral disagreement.udIn this perspective should be read processing of his historicist method that begin byudacknowledgement of narrative character of reality.udHowever this approach, developed by MacIntyre to give an appropriate answer to the problems ofudrelativism and perspectivism, has resulted criticism of inconsistency: his position would remainudentangled in a vicious circle.udMacIntyre’s answer to the Enlightenment project failure has been labeled itself as a form ofudrelativism by some critics, according to which, if the MacIntyre’s aim was to find a solution to theud‘disquieting suggestion’, he would have failed. He would not reply carefully to relativism andudperspectivism. He would not be able to build a convincing theory that escapes relativism andudperspectivism, ‘the protagonist of post–Enlightenment’: he would be a relativist thinker.udHow can this mistake be avoided?udAnswering to this challenge, in his later writings, MacIntyre does appeal to Aristotelian-Thomism’sudsynthesis and improves a concept of tradition as a intellectual inquiry.udThis is the deep meaning of the macintyrean tradition–constituted and tradition–constitutive methodudof enquiry, whose application on every level of investigation (epistemological, ethical and socialudand anthropological) allows the full intelligibility of philosophical and ethical concepts because farudaway from hypostatizing those concepts it gives a rational account by inserting them in theudrespective contexts of reference and treating them as part of a whole.udThe MacIntyre’s effort is thereby to connect his historical inquiry with the Aristotelian-Thomism’sudmetaphysics.