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.
Hi Carrie-Ann! I haven't read After Virtue since its heyday in the 1980s (!), and I've only dipped sporadically into his other writings. I found After Virtue quite stimulating at the time, but I really need to revisit it after having lived vibrantly and pondered deeply over the ensuing years. I'll definitely report back with my thoughts!
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?
Hi Jackie, thanks for your note. I don't have Smith's book in front of me, but if I recall correctly he was making a distinction between forming, informing, and deforming (I don't think "reforming" was part of it!). Although the wording is perhaps too cute, his point was that every society has a shaping influence on the individual through its expectations and affordances: a commercial society like ours prods a person toward making money, a religious society like medieval Christendom prods a person toward spirituality, a sharing society like (my understanding of) Native American culture prods a person toward collaboration, etc. Of course there are many dimensions here and we can't easily pigeonhole entire societies with words like "individualistic" and "collectivistic" (e.g., in the limited scholarly works I've read, American society is sometimes described more as anti-state than individualistic given our willingness to work in large corporations, create associational forms of the kind that so impressed Tocqueville, etc.). I'll take another look at Smith's book and perhaps post again on this topic.
"Reforming" would be an interesting omission in that context, because there's probably more of that going on over a person's lifetime.
Societies/cultures certainly do exert shaping influences on us; I'm not sure I understand your use of "affordances" though. Perhaps I'm more of a Gibsonian purist in my conceptualizing of it: they exist in an environment and are scaled to an organism. Since humans have a lot of variability, I tended to highlight in my courses how they can differ individually: e.g., a person with one functional arm has different affordances in a typical American home than one with two.
Thanks for your reply; it has prodded me (heh!) to get to a long-simmering post on psychology's shortcomings as I see them.
As to "societal affordances", that's a vague notion floating around in my head that I began to sketch out three years ago but haven't pursued since: https://stpeter.im/journal/1709.html
In particular, I have not followed up on any hints in the Gibsons' work along these lines (if I recall correctly, they might have done so in a chapter or two later in their careers).
There's some intriguing stuff here that I'd like to pursue when I can devote attention to it!
"Reasons for Realism: Selected Essays of James J. Gibson" has a complete bibliography of his published work. A quick look through it turned up two promising titles: "Review of S. H. Brit, *Social Psychology of Modern Life*,". Psychological Bulletin, 1941, 38, 895-897. (b); and Social Perception and the Psychology of Perceptual Learning, in M. Sherif & M. O. Wilson (Eds.), *Group Relations at the Crossroads*, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954.
Eleanor's work may have more that's relevant to social psychology, but I'm much less familiar with her full body of work.
Thanks for this information! There might be a bit more in Reasons for Realism. I notice that there's a Wikipedia page about social affordances, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_affordance (but my vague notion of _societal_ affordances might differ).
This is something I'm extremely interested as I was highly impacted by MacIntyre but also haven't revisited him in decades and don't really know what has happened with these new monastic movements.
In the coming months, I'm planning to re-read After Virtue and also read Dependent Rational Animals. As far as I can see so far, only some of the New Monastic folks have been inspired by MacIntyre. At a first glance the "interspiritual" monastics seem to be closest to the right track, since no single sect has all the answers.
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.
Hi Carrie-Ann! I haven't read After Virtue since its heyday in the 1980s (!), and I've only dipped sporadically into his other writings. I found After Virtue quite stimulating at the time, but I really need to revisit it after having lived vibrantly and pondered deeply over the ensuing years. I'll definitely report back with my thoughts!
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?
Hi Jackie, thanks for your note. I don't have Smith's book in front of me, but if I recall correctly he was making a distinction between forming, informing, and deforming (I don't think "reforming" was part of it!). Although the wording is perhaps too cute, his point was that every society has a shaping influence on the individual through its expectations and affordances: a commercial society like ours prods a person toward making money, a religious society like medieval Christendom prods a person toward spirituality, a sharing society like (my understanding of) Native American culture prods a person toward collaboration, etc. Of course there are many dimensions here and we can't easily pigeonhole entire societies with words like "individualistic" and "collectivistic" (e.g., in the limited scholarly works I've read, American society is sometimes described more as anti-state than individualistic given our willingness to work in large corporations, create associational forms of the kind that so impressed Tocqueville, etc.). I'll take another look at Smith's book and perhaps post again on this topic.
"Reforming" would be an interesting omission in that context, because there's probably more of that going on over a person's lifetime.
Societies/cultures certainly do exert shaping influences on us; I'm not sure I understand your use of "affordances" though. Perhaps I'm more of a Gibsonian purist in my conceptualizing of it: they exist in an environment and are scaled to an organism. Since humans have a lot of variability, I tended to highlight in my courses how they can differ individually: e.g., a person with one functional arm has different affordances in a typical American home than one with two.
Thanks for your reply; it has prodded me (heh!) to get to a long-simmering post on psychology's shortcomings as I see them.
As to "societal affordances", that's a vague notion floating around in my head that I began to sketch out three years ago but haven't pursued since: https://stpeter.im/journal/1709.html
In particular, I have not followed up on any hints in the Gibsons' work along these lines (if I recall correctly, they might have done so in a chapter or two later in their careers).
There's some intriguing stuff here that I'd like to pursue when I can devote attention to it!
"Reasons for Realism: Selected Essays of James J. Gibson" has a complete bibliography of his published work. A quick look through it turned up two promising titles: "Review of S. H. Brit, *Social Psychology of Modern Life*,". Psychological Bulletin, 1941, 38, 895-897. (b); and Social Perception and the Psychology of Perceptual Learning, in M. Sherif & M. O. Wilson (Eds.), *Group Relations at the Crossroads*, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954.
Eleanor's work may have more that's relevant to social psychology, but I'm much less familiar with her full body of work.
Thanks for this information! There might be a bit more in Reasons for Realism. I notice that there's a Wikipedia page about social affordances, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_affordance (but my vague notion of _societal_ affordances might differ).
I'd love to hear more about MacIntyre when you go back and reread him.
I'll be sure to write at least one follow-up post!
This is something I'm extremely interested as I was highly impacted by MacIntyre but also haven't revisited him in decades and don't really know what has happened with these new monastic movements.
In the coming months, I'm planning to re-read After Virtue and also read Dependent Rational Animals. As far as I can see so far, only some of the New Monastic folks have been inspired by MacIntyre. At a first glance the "interspiritual" monastics seem to be closest to the right track, since no single sect has all the answers.