Abstract
Is After Virtue a conservative book? MacIntyre is sometimes charged with being a conservative. But for his part, MacIntyre has been concerned to disclaim any affiliation with conservativism. Nevertheless, despite his protestations, one can find strong conservative elements in his work, though these exist alongside unconservative, even radical elements. In this chapter, I seek to identify and assess both the conservative and unconservative elements of After Virtue. In the first section, I offer an explanation of what conservativism is, focusing on how it involves a disposition to conserve what is good in the given world and a hesitancy or cautiousness regarding change. I also discuss here the conservative’s scepticism about rationalistic approaches to human affairs that are detached from ordinary human practice, which leads the conservative to have a preference for the ‘tried-and-true’ and to affirm the importance of tradition. In the second section, I identify and discuss the conservative elements of After Virtue, focusing on MacIntyre’s critique of the unsituated reason of the ‘Enlightenment project’ and his endorsement of the importance of social practices and tradition in the life of virtue. While MacIntyre distinguishes his understanding of tradition from that of Burke, I argue that their views are much closer than he allows. MacIntyre also identifies political conservativism with a free-market ideology; however, I argue that his critique of capitalism can be situated within a tradition of conservative criticism of capitalism that is resurgent today. In the final section, I identify and discuss the unconservative elements of After Virtue, focusing on MacIntyre’s emphasis on repudiation of the present that is at odds with the conservative emphasis on affirmation of the given world.