Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
After Virtue
Modern moral disagreement is interminable because we have inherited fragments of a tradition we no longer understand — recovery requires returning to Aristotle
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | After Virtue |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Finite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Finite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Immediate |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Tradition |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Finite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
After Virtue
Tradition-constituted inquiry unfolds across historical time. Individual lives are narratively united from birth to death, embedded in larger traditions.
Space
After Virtue
Standard background; communities and practices are real spatially-extended human realities.
Matter
After Virtue
Human animals with rational and social natures are the locus of virtue.
Observer
After Virtue
The MacIntyrean observer is the tradition-embedded narrative self — embodied, plural, active in a practice. Moral authority is tradition tempered by rational critique within the tradition.
Energy
After Virtue
Not engaged.
Information
After Virtue
Real moral knowledge is preserved across traditions of inquiry. Personal information conserved in the Christian framework.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
After Virtue's critique of the Enlightenment moral project has been criticised as too sweeping (Charles Larmore, Jeremy Waldron) and defended by communitarians and traditionalists. MacIntyre's own subsequent work clarified that some forms of Aristotelianism are recoverable while others are not. The relation between After Virtue's general Aristotelianism and Whose Justice?'s explicit Thomism has been the central interpretive question.