Dependent Rational Animals : Why Human Beings Need the Virtues - Hardcover

MacIntyre, Alasdair

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0715629026 ISBN 13: 9780715629024

Publisher: Open Court, 1999

Synopsis

Where should an account of the virtues begin? This book on moral philosophy argues that we should begin with those facts of vulnerability and disability, and of consequent dependence on others, to which moral philosophers have generally given insufficient attention, and with the animal nature of human beings - that which exhibits their kinship to members of other intelligent species. He argues that it is by reference to these that we become able to understand the part played in our lives both by the virtues of independent practical reasoning and by the virtues of an acknowledged dependence on others.

About this title

About the Author

Alasdair MacIntyre is currently Arts and Sciences Professor of Philosophy at Duke University.

Review

Vulnerability and disability make dependence an ineluctable element of human existence. With clear, nuanced, and remarkably compelling justificatory reasoning, MacIntyre delineates personal and social forms of moral life that facilitate our flourishing in virtue of, rather than despite, human dependence. -- Anita Silvers, author of Disability, Difference, Discrimination

With characteristic originality and insight, Alasdair MacIntyre explores the nature of practical rationality in the light of our human vulnerability and mutual dependence. Two themes, arising from our animal nature, frame the discussion: the continuities between human beings and other species, and the pervasiveness of human disability. The argument of Dependent Rational Animals relies upon and helpfully illuminates some familiar motifs from MacIntyre: the continuing fertility of a broadly Aristotelian notion of the virtues and the limitations of both the modern nation-state and the family. This fascinating work is wonderfully accessible from beginning to end. It is a model of how profound and complex philosophical argument can be rendered available to a wider public. -- Jonathan Wolff, University College, London

Edition details

• Publisher: Open Court
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0715629026
• ISBN 13: 9780715629024
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2