Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry
Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition — MacIntyre's 1990 Gifford Lectures completing the After Virtue trilogy
Tradition: Contemporary virtue ethics / tradition-constituted enquiry
Three rival modes of contemporary moral enquiry — Encyclopaedic, Genealogical, Traditioned — with the case for the Thomist-Aristotelian Traditioned version
Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry is the third volume of MacIntyre's trilogy on moral philosophy (After Virtue, 1981; Whose Justice?, 1988; Three Rival Versions, 1990) and his most directly methodological work. Delivered as the 1988 Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh, the book identifies three contemporary modes of moral enquiry: (1) the Encyclopaedic — confident modern rationality's belief in universal moral principles accessible to any rational person (the Encyclopaedia Britannica's ninth edition, 1875-89, as paradigm); (2) the Genealogical — the Nietzsche-Foucault project of unmasking apparently universal moral claims as historically -contingent power-formations; (3) the Traditioned — the Thomist-Aristotelian project of moral enquiry conducted from within a particular philosophical-religious tradition (the proposal developed in MacIntyre's earlier work). The book develops the case for the Traditioned mode as the most rationally adequate of the three. The work completes MacIntyre's explicit move into Thomism (he converted to Catholicism around this time) and shapes subsequent virtue ethics and post-liberal political theory.
Author
Editions cited
- Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (University of Notre Dame Press, 1990)
- After Virtue, Whose Justice?, Three Rival Versions, Dependent Rational Animals — the major MacIntyre sequence
School Embodiments
Three Rival Versions is MacIntyre's explicit case for the Thomist-Aristotelian tradition as the most rationally adequate mode of moral enquiry. It marks his public turn to Catholic Thomism.
"The Thomist-Aristotelian tradition can give an account of the achievements and failures of its rivals that the rivals cannot give of themselves." (Three Rival Versions, paraphrasing the central argument)
The Aristotelian-hylomorphic anthropology underlying the Traditioned version — humans as rational animals with proper ends — is foundational.
"The hylomorphic anthropology underwrites the Thomist moral framework." (Three Rival Versions, paraphrasing)
A complicated relation: Three Rival Versions engages the Genealogical mode (Nietzsche, Foucault) extensively and critically. The genealogical critique of universal claims is taken seriously before being subsumed.
"The genealogical mode's achievement is real, but its limitations are also real." (Three Rival Versions, paraphrasing)
MacIntyre's method of evaluating philosophical traditions by their practical-historical fruitfulness has pragmatic-realist structure.
"Traditions are evaluated by their capacity to address their internal crises and to provide accounts of their rivals." (Three Rival Versions, paraphrasing)
MacIntyre's moral realism — real human ends, real virtues — is preserved in tradition-constituted form.
"The moral realism preserved within tradition-constituted enquiry." (Three Rival Versions, paraphrasing)
A complicated relation: MacIntyre rejects Enlightenment rationalism's confidence in tradition-independent reason while preserving the rational ambition within tradition.
"Rationality is tradition-constituted, not tradition-independent." (Three Rival Versions, paraphrasing)
A formal-philosophical affinity: the analysis of the three modes as structurally distinct frameworks has structuralist resonances.
"The three modes are structurally distinct frameworks of moral enquiry." (Three Rival Versions, paraphrasing)
A retrospective affinity: traditions understood as developing over time, responding to internal crises, has process-philosophical structure.
"Traditions develop through the recurrent overcoming of internal crises." (Three Rival Versions, paraphrasing)
A complicated relation: MacIntyre writes within the Anglo-American analytic tradition while developing a substantive critique of its characteristic commitments.
"The analytic tradition's strengths and limitations." (Three Rival Versions, paraphrasing)
A complicated relation: MacIntyre engages critically with Marxist-liberationist analysis (he is a former Marxist) and retains the concern with structural injustice while rejecting the Enlightenment framework.
"The continuing debt to Marxist insights, within a Thomist framework." (Three Rival Versions, paraphrasing)
Internal Tensions
Whether MacIntyre's case for the Thomist-Aristotelian tradition can be made without circularity — isn't the standard of "rational adequacy" itself tradition-constituted? — has been a continuing scholarly question (Stanley Hauerwas with sympathy, Jeffrey Stout with criticism). The book's genre — Gifford Lectures, traditionally focused on natural theology — has its own complicated relation to MacIntyre's Thomist commitments. The relation between Three Rival Versions and the subsequent Dependent Rational Animals (1999) — which qualifies the Aristotelian anthropology — is itself a continuing interpretive theme.
I. Time
Tradition-constituted historical time — philosophical traditions develop through historical time, responding to internal crises.
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II. Space
The institutional-social space of philosophical tradition — universities, schools, communities of inquiry.
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III. Matter
Embodied human life as the substrate of moral-philosophical reflection.
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IV. Observer
The tradition-constituted philosophical enquirer — plural, embodied, active in enquiry but constituted by inherited frameworks. Personal-providential God in the Thomist framework.
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V. Energy
The intellectual-historical energies of tradition — maintained, criticised, developed.
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VI. Information
The accumulated practical-philosophical wisdom of the tradition, preserved through institutional-textual transmission.
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Personas that cite this work
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry resolves each dilemma
51 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 3 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 6 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.