The Flourishing of Alasdair MacIntyre

In Conversations on Ethics (2009), the discussion that Alex Voorhoeve has with Alasdair MacIntyre is perhaps as good an entry into the vast corpus of the latter's thinking as anything available in his own words of comparable length.

In the discussion, Prof. MacIntyre explains how and why he came to regard Aristotelian philosophy (supplemented by Thomas Aquinas) as essentially correct.  I am most interested in the Scottish philosopher's idea of human flourishing, or excellence -- what Aristotle called eudaimonia -- and its relation to practical intelligence, or phronēsis. This topic, the intersection of eudaimonia and phronēsis, of flourishing and practical wisdom, is particularly relevant to this blog.  Its title is, after all, Feeding Phronēsis.

My reading of MacIntyre has broadened and deepened (and I hope been more finely tuned) since I first began this post two years ago.  The draft has lain in abeyance for that long despite my intent to return to and polish it.  Rather than start afresh now in exploring Prof. MacIntyre on practical rationality, let me revisit what he has to say principally in his particularly thorough conversation with Voorhoeve.  In due course in the future I am sure that I will return to reflect more critically and constructively on other intersections of MacIntyre's thinking and my own, especially on practical rationality.

At present, what follows is in many respects my attempt to assemble critical elements of MacIntyre's account of flourishing and practical rationality.  It is largely descriptive because it is largely an exercise in mental organization.  I find compelling in MacIntyre's discussion the limits of moral rules, the necessity of wisdom, the embeddedness of human flourishing in practices of communities and traditions, the unavoidability of dependency on others (especially friends), and the storied nature of flourishing as a quest.

The Attraction of Moral Rules

One of the features of utilitarianism that makes it on the surface seem appealing to many people as an ethical approach is its maximization method for determining what is morally good:  that is morally good which best maximizes happiness.  Consider these two statements from the opening of Jeremy Bentham's classic An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1781):

By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question: or, what is the same thing in other words to promote or to oppose that happiness. I say of every action whatsoever, and therefore not only of every action of a private individual, but of every measure of government. (I.2) 

An action then may be said to be conformable to then principle of utility, or, for shortness sake, to utility, (meaning with respect to the community at large) when the tendency it has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any it has to diminish it. (I.6)

The reasons for utilitarianism's attractiveness are many and complicated, but its promise, more apparent than real, to provide an easy-to-follow method or rule for determining in difficult life situations what is the right thing to do must be one of the chief reasons:  you run a moral cost/benefit analysis and just do what maximizes the happiness of the most people. There.  Easy.  Except when it is not.

Necessity of Judgment That Is Not Rule-Governed

What might have at first glance seemed straightforward, and therefore appealing as an ethical option, quickly, of course, becomes complicated.  What counts as "happiness"?  Do all persons share their conception of it, whatever it turns out to be?  How exactly do you (objectively) quantify happiness or its opposite -- things that are largely qualitative -- in order to conduct the ethical calculation?  Even if we answer these questions satisfactorily, why should we think that maximization of utility conceived in the proper way obligates us? Why, in other words, is "maximal utility" normative; what makes the concept normative; what is the source of its normativity? And does it really guide us through the moral dilemmas, some weighty and some mundane, that we routinely face, like watching the film that my friend prefers rather than the one that will make me happy?  It is not long before one may suspect that both the commonest and most consequential decisions are not clearly answerable by a flow chart of rules.

It is, it seems to me, precisely when we are confronted by the necessity of judgments that are not rule-governed that we seek out advice from friends, place a premium in fresh ways on wisdom (not just knowledge), and acknowledge, tacitly or openly, our limitations in practical, moral reasoning.  To put the matter differently, it seems to me that these moments of dependence and humility are exactly the moments conducive to human flourishing. Or they can be.

Phronēsis as Part of Flourishing

Professor MacIntyre explains how he came to understand his moral commitments as basically Aristotelian, and that self-understanding coincided with his realizing that

there are always situations in which no rule will give us the guidance that we need.  So we cannot do without a capacity for judgement that is not itself rule-governed, that capacity to which Aristotle gave the name phronēsis, or 'practical intelligence'.  This is the capacity that enables us to identify in each particular situation which rules, if any, are relevant and then to frame our choices accordingly. ("The Illusion of Self-Sufficiency," in Conversations on Ethics, 118-19)

Immediately following this, he links it to what will be constitutive of eudaimonia, happiness of a particular kind, namely, that of human flourishing.

And it became clear to me that the exercise of phronēsis is always informed by some conception both of a good at which we are aiming in these particular circumstances and of a further good at which we are aiming as our ultimate good.  So I needed to elucidate both the concept of a good and the concept of the good. ("Illusion," in Conversations on Ethics, 119)

With respect to things that are good for their own sake, Prof. MacIntyre says that we should ask "which of them to pursue and in which combination," and he explains "that when I am assessing how such goods should be ordered, I am considering what part they play in human flourishing, what contribution they might make to my flourishing as a human being," which he believes is a "quasi-biological question."  Why is it this?  Because "what an individual needs to flourish is to develop the distinctive powers that it possesses as a member of its species" ("Illusion," in Conversations on Ethics, 119).

It is central to MacIntyre's explication of his own Thomistically-informed Aristotelianism, particularly practical rationality, to appreciate the reciprocality of the practice-based answers to these two questions:  (1) What is my good? and (2) What is the good?  MacIntyre came to see that this connection is structurally part of all practical reasoning of human beings, and it is constitutive of and integral to their personal formation:

This connection between what kind of person I have to become in order to achieve a given end and what the character of that given end is is of course not peculiar to this kind of enquiry.  It is a connection embodied in the structure and reasoning of all practice-based activity; what the need for it in enquiry by particular human beings designed to answer the questions "What is my good?" and "What is the good?" confirms is that such enquiry itself is a practice.  ("Plain Persons and Moral Philosophy: Rules, Virtues and Goods" [1992], 18)

MacIntyre defines practices as "those cooperative forms of activity whose participants jointly pursue the goods internal to those forms of activity and jointly value excellence in achieving those goods" (7; for a full definition see his After Virtue [3d ed.], p. 187).  To see that moral inquiry is structurally part of practice is to begin to see that human flourishing in the moral realm is personal, in the sense of being involved with the development of one's own character, and communal, in the sense of being embedded in a social context of community and tradition.  It is about becoming good, achieving goods, transmitting goods, all while individually and collectively pursuing the good.

Flourishing and the Aim of Being Human

For MacIntyre, judgments of human flourishing are those "whereby we judge unconditionally about what it is best for individuals or groups to be or do or have not only qua agents engaged in this or that form of activity in this or that role or roles, but also qua human beings" (Dependent Rational Animals, 67).  The issue then in human flourishing is largely, for him, to learn both something about who we are and what we characteristically do, namely, that we are practical reasoners and that we engage in practical reasoning:

Human beings need to learn to understand themselves as practical reasoners about goods, about what on particular occasions it is best for them to do and about how it is best for them to live out their lives.
     Without learning this human beings cannot flourish and in this respect of course they differ from dolphins, so that their vulnerability is also of a different order. (DRA, 67)

To flourish as humans, MacIntyre insists, involves not only to understand ourselves as practical reasoners and to hone our skills reasoning practically; it is also to recognize our particular vulnerabilities as humans.

Unavoidability of Human Vulnerability and Dependence

The matter of vulnerability specific to humans is a rich topic to explore another time.  For now, let us say merely that it is rich because it points us toward what is an uncomfortable truth of human life, a truth that we often would prefer to ignore, to embellish, or, like Aristotle's "great-souled man" (megalopsychos), to deny:  namely, that as humans we are not self-sufficient; we are vulnerable variously at different stages of our lives. Any practice, theory, or practical reasoning about my good and the good -- which are ultimately reciprocal questions, the one leading to the other and the second in turn informing the first -- must take account of it. Given that our vulnerabilities are an ordinary part of life, it is incumbent upon us, even those of us who are "plain persons," to exercise our deliberative capacities as we assess what things we consider good and the ultimate thing that makes life worth living.  We must, in other words, embrace personally both goods and the good:

What each of us has to do, in order to develop our powers as independent reasoners, and so to flourish qua members of our species, is to make the transition from accepting what we are taught by those earliest teachers to making our own independent judgments about goods, judgments about goods, judgments that we are able to justify rationally to ourselves and to others as furnishing us with good reasons for acting in this way rather than that.  (DRA, 71)

For MacIntyre, as for Aristotle and Aquinas before him, friendship is critically important: "For rational deliberation is essentially social.  To think constructively about my own good in practical terms in everyday life, I need to deliberate along with and in the company of others" ("Illusion," in Conversations on Ethics, 120).

Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)

This is worth underlining, because with the advent of social media the nature and contours of friendship have been changing.  See, for instance, Sherry Turkle's 2011 book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other and her more recent 2015 Reclaiming Conversation:  The Power of Talk in a Digital Age.  If Turkle's appraisal is on target, then the proliferating use of technology as a substitute for people, or at least as something that crowds out more classical forms of human interaction, is something that threatens the flourishing of our lives as humans.

According to MacIntyre, deliberation among friends is not just important, but crucially important. "This is not only because I will have to make shared decisions with people around me, but also because my own thinking is likely to be defective unless it is exposed to criticism by others who are, to some significant degree, concerned about my good in the same way that I am, and who know that I am concerned about their good in the same way that they are.  What is the consequence of not having critical friends?  It is that one becomes the victim of one's hopes and fears, of wishful thinking and fantasy" ("Illusion," in Conversations on Ethics, 120).

Phronēsis Lacks a Formula

It is perhaps a frustration of those who are attracted to MacIntyre's explication of ethics that this concept of phronēsis is not precise.  Put simply, phronēsis does not have a formula.  For instance, there is no single measuring rod, as supposedly in utilitarianism, that defines right conduct.  There is no rule, as in deontology such as Kant's theory, that directs you in maxim form how to act.  Virtue ethics, as it is often labeled, leaves the concepts of both flourishing and phronēsis perhaps in the nature of the case indefinite.

What, then, is it to flourish?  What does it entail?  MacIntyre's emphasis on dependency, or the illusion of self-sufficiency, in his discussion of flourishing carries with it a helpful guide or reminder:

In order to flourish, we must receive the kind of care that we need when we are very young, ill, injured, disabled, or very old.  Acknowledging this means not sharing, in certain respects, the attitudes of Aristotle's megalopsychos.  It involves, as Aquinas knew, being able to ask for and graciously receive others' help.  It also means acknowledging what we owe to others as a consequence of what we have received. (Conversations on Ethics, 124)

Learning from others, and before that humbly admitting its indispensability, can help us to avoid "illusions that stand in the way of our recognizing our need for some of the virtue that we need to flourish" (Conversations on Ethics, 130).  This learning, it must be emphasized, is not individualistic, and my flourishing is not to be conceived apart from our flourishing:

And, since for a human being to flourish unqualifiedly qua human being, it is her or his life as a whole that must flourish, the individual has to learn through experience about the places both of independence and of dependence on others in the different stages of a flourishing life. It is insofar as an individual is able to articulate what she or he has thus learned that that individual is on occasion also to make explicit the first premise of her or his practical reasoning. So the practical learning needed, if one is to become a practical reasoner is the same learning needed, if one is to find one's place within a network of givers and receivers in which the achievement of one's individual good is understood to be inseparable from the achievement of the common good. (DRA, 113).

What MacIntyre describes is narrative flourishing.  It is recognizing and owning up to being part of a story with other characters committed to advancing in certain proximate (individual and shared) ends because of an eye on the ultimate end.

The Virtues of Stories and Storytelling

Some time ago I reflected on certain moral dimensions of the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (see that entry here).  I noticed, among other things, the interconnection between what turned out to be Gawain's personal good and the community's good.  This should in retrospect seem only natural, since it was on behalf of the community that Gawain set out on his individual quest.

What was less expected is that what Gawain along the way learns about himself and is part and parcel of his succeeding individually and for the community radiates out to and is owned by the community.  This is the, we might say, accordion structure to the narrative:  the community's ends are located in Gawain's personal ends, and his ends are shared with the community.  The interweaving of his goals and theirs, although shared yet still distinct, provides unity to the narrative of his quest.  If I understand MacIntyre rightly, he suggest that something similar is at work in human flourishing and practical rationality.

It is necessarily at work because the practical intelligence that an individual hones through one's endeavors is tied to the seeking in thought and in life experiences of answers to the questions "What is my good?" and "What is the good?"  That questioning and answering occurs as part of various practices, embedded with and inextricable from one's social and cultural practices.  It is these practices that provide proximate goals (the challenges to overcome and aims to achieve) in pursuit of the orienting ultimate goal (the telos of the quest), and together they provide a unity to one's identity within this storied structure.

In what does the unity of an individual life consist? The answer is that its unity is the unity of a narrative embodied in a single life. To ask 'What is the good for me?' is to ask how best I might live out that unity and bring it to completion. To ask 'What is the good for man?' is to ask what all answers to the former question must have in common. But now it is important to emphasize that it is the systematic asking of these two questions and the attempt to answer them in deed as well as in word which provide the moral life with its unity. The unity of a human life is the unity of a narrative quest. Quests some­ times fail, are frustrated, abandoned or dissipated into distractions; and human lives may in all these ways also fail. But the only criteria for success or failure in a human life as a whole are the critieria [sic] of success or failure in a narrated or to-be-narrated quest. (After Virtue [3d ed.], 218-19)

Our selfhood must be understood narratively, and it cannot be understood in isolation from others, just as Gawain's personal formation impinged on the community of the Round Table:

The other aspect of narrative selfhood is correlative: I am not only ac­countable, I am one who can always ask others for an account, who can put others to the question. I am part of their story, as they are part of mine. The narrative of any one life is part of an interlocking set of narra­tives. (After Virtue [3d ed.], 218)

So far this may not sound too novel.  You might say, "Well, of course I am living out a story, my story, and I conceive of the episodes of my life naturally enough as a 'chapter' and others as the 'cast of characters.'"  True enough.  We do use that metaphorical language, borrowed from the contents and structure of books and plays to describe the nature and progression of our lives.  A challenge to certain, predominantly western, ways of thinking about that life progression is, however, that as much as we tell our stories to others, we are not primarily or solely the author of our stories:

A central thesis then begins to emerge: man is in his actions and prac­tice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal. He is not essentially, but becomes through his history, a teller of stories that aspire to truth. But the key question for men is not about their own authorship; I can only answer the question 'What am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question 'Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?' We enter human society, that is, with one or more imputed characters--roles into which we have been drafted--and we have to learn what they are in order to be able to understand how others respond to us and how our responses to them are apt to be construed. (After Virtue [3d ed.], 216; see also 208)

What larger story, what metanarrative, as it were, are we wrapped up in, are we part of?  Coming to terms with this feature of our personal identities -- namely, that our stories are in large part inherited stories -- and practically reasoning how to respond is central and indispensable to, indeed constitutive of, phronēsis and our development of it in our characters and lives.  This is to be precise a matter of responding not only to (moral) questions that arise as we live out these stories, but also to the metanarrative itself (e.g., do we see it as part of reality? do we accept or resist it?).  It is, further, a matter of answering in narrative terms the theoretically phrased questions "What is my good?" and "What is the good?"

Appreciating this nexus between story and theory may be a critical step in the cultivation of our own practical reasoning and ultimately our flourishing.