After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Bloomsbury Revelations)

First, a note on the edition. Yes, there are a surprising amount of typos all over the place, but I had no difficulty figuring out what was meant. The typeset chosen seemed strange to me at first, but did not hinder my reading at all. The cover feels nice too, and looks more inviting than the more severe classical style cover on the other prominent edition of this title. On to the content:The first half of the book is a breakdown of the many presuppositions that lurk behind moral philosophy today. Macintyre gives both the historical context for these different points of view but then also explains in the simplest terms the key propositions for their arguments. In this way, the reader gets a brief history of moral philosophy, going backwards from the Emotivism of the 20th century to the Enlightenment. His arguments are very concise, ultimately showing why morality after the Enlightenment is doomed to fail in its project of "justifying morality."In the second half of the book, Macintyre systematically presents his own Aristotelian understanding of moral philosophy, which rests on virtue, but also practices and tradition. Even if one is a seasoned Aristotelian, having thoroughly studied the Ethics and the Politics, there is still something to learn from Macintyre's presentation. He shows how Aristotle differs from understanding of morality present in Homer or in the tragedians, but even more significantly, he tries to give a coherent account of Aristotle's morality without relying on what Macintyre calls the "metaphysical biology" of Aristotle. Personally, I don't have a problem with this "metaphysical biology" (as I understand it) and I even think that without this, Macintyre's account has something artificial about it--it seems a tad constructed. Nevertheless, as many in our day find the very notions of matter/form, body/soul, natural end, etc. difficult to think about, I'm glad to see his attempt to present the moral philosophy in a way that does not depend so heavily on this. His mode of proceeding is also helpful for highlighting the context of the moral life, bound with the lives and practices of others, whereas even the Ethics of Aristotle might lead one to think about it too individualistically.One thing I found amusing was his references to famous Marxist figures as examples of virtuous persons. Perhaps it is well-known that Macintyre was formerly a Marxist, but when I recently started reading the Anti-Dühring of Friedrich Engels, I was stuck by how similar parts of it were to Macintyre's approach. For example, Engels criticizes those who take bougoeis values, etc. to be universal values. So also, Macintyre points out that many philosophers thought they had shown the uselessness of morality universally, when in fact, they had only shown the uselessness of a conception of morality prominent in a certain place and time.Overall, a very excellent book, and one that I would assign as a main text for an Intro to Moral Philosophy course. As an excellent as the Ethics of Aristotle is, this book has the advantage of showing how the present situation arrived where is.

Obviously the content of the book is not bad. It's one of the seminal works of 20th century philosophy.What's bad about this book is the reprint. This is a reprint of the third edition, which is itself widely available. The choice of font is horrendous and does not match the aesthetic of the cover or content. It's completely sans serif, basically printed in Calibri font. This comes as a surprise given the quality of the cover. It does not fit the sentiment or mood of the book whatsoever, and it honestly just looks ugly and cheap.On top of that, there is about one editorial/spelling error per page. It's egregious. Every. Single. Page. has an error. They either forgot to put a period at the completion of a sentence, spell it like this "iti," or just generally spell regular words wrong. One classic example of the sundry errors is found on a quote in the pages 260-1. It says: "Within the central cultural of liberal or bureaucratic individualism new conceptions of the virtues emerge and the concept of a virtue is itself transformed." It's a small error, that, in itself isn't noticeable--they misspelled "culture" as "cultural." However, when something like this happens on every page, it completely takes away from the reading experience.If you ask me, just get the regular printing of the third edition from Notre Dame. It's the one with an ugly, grey book cover. You may be tempted by this prints nice sheen, but I guarantee you that it's a cheap exterior. The sheen fades quickly. Just buy the ugly one, and you'll have a much better time.

Unfortunately, there are so many typos in this edition from Bloomsbury Revelations that it actually distorts the text. At times you don't even know what the word was supposed to be... Very sad for a great book like this.

The text is saturated with errors. For a better read, I suggest finding this book from a different publisher. The errors are distracting and disrupt the flow of the text and thought -- a disservice to the text, reader, and author.

MacIntyre's historical perspective on the history of moral philosophy is not without insight, although he defines it as a continual fall from grace and descent into emotivism, with all subject to the withing glare of Nietzsche. It's invariably easier to critique than to promote, and his solution - a return to a form of neo-Aristotelianism - is hopelessly vague aside from an aura of social conservatism.

thanks for notifying us of bloomsbury's shameful treatment of this classic. it all boils down to a publishing industry in total disarray for which cheap profitability is more important than scholarly integrity. people are working against the clock with less than mediocre knowledge of the content they're working with. it was pretty horrendous news when bloomsbury starting devouring continuum and a other venues and arteries of philosophy. macintyre would have been appalled.

If Bloomsbury were responsible, this edition would simply be pulped.