Utopia Is Not an Option
Alasdair MacIntyre and the New Monasticism
The recent death of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has prompted numerous assessments of his work (which, I'll admit, I have not looked at in decades - an oversight that I plan to remedy soon because of his status as perhaps the most prominent neo-Aristotelian thinker of the last fifty years). Several of the remembrances I've read expressed frustration with the lack of specificity in MacIntyre's political philosophy, which boils down to what my college professor Charles Larmore called "polis envy": the desire to construct communities on the model of the ancient Greek city-states, in which all the citizens worked together for the sake of a common purpose and a common vision of the good life. Only in such a setting, says MacIntyre, can human beings lead an ethically flourishing life.
This line of thinking strikes me as somewhat utopian, at least if people attempt to translate it into a consistent political program - as perhaps some of the "National Conservatives" have tried to do. Although years ago I went through a utopian or meta-utopian phase of my own, these days I'm not convinced. Yes, there is plenty to fix in our political, economic, and societal arrangements; even more significantly, as Thomas W. Smith points out in his book Revaluing Ethics, every society deforms the human person in one way or another, so there is always room for improvement. Yet it seems to me that one can live an examined, ethically thriving life in any reasonably free society, because such a society provides sufficient affordances for work, love, family, friendship, community involvement, artistic creation, scientific research, lifelong learning, personal reflection, religious contemplation, philosophical speculation, and all the other worthy activities of life. We don't need a utopia to make that possible, which is a good thing because, as I like to say, utopia is not an option.
However, if people don't attempt to translate this line of thinking into a political program, then we'll end up with small intentional groupings along the lines of the ancient philosophical communities or the medieval monasteries (MacIntyre's book After Virtue ends with a call for a new St. Benedict). Indeed, inspired in some instances by MacIntyre, a number of such groups have formed over the last quarter century, loosely gathered under the heading of the New Monasticism. I plan to do also some reading on this topic in the coming months, with special attention to the potential for resurrecting at least some of the ancient spirit of philosophy as a way of life.
I've read a lot of MacIntyre and disagree with much in his views. However, he's one of the most provocatively interesting thinkers I've ever read. He is a deep thinker and extremely insightful in diagnosing various problems (and their sources) in modern ethics and politics. He's also really engaging to read, so if you're going to get into the thick of moral and political theory, he's a must-read.
This caught my attention: "... even more significantly, as Thomas W. Smith points out in his book *Revaluing Ethics*, *every* society deforms the human person in one way or another, so there is always room for improvement."
The link to your journal didn't address the idea of society deforming individuals; to this psychologist, that's a very curious and loaded verb. One's surroundings—physical as well as cultural/ethnic—demonstrably shape one, but to call that a deformation suggests it's a change away from an intended result. Am I reading too much in to that phrase?