Krytyka liberalizmu w filozofii Alasdaira Maclntyre’a

Abstract

MacIntyre’s relation to Liberalism is to be viewed in the broader context of his understanding of history of philosophy and in particular of history of ethics. In his opinion the Enlightenment project of justifying morality had to fail because its thinkers rejected Aristotle’s teleological scheme based upon three elements: man-as-he-happens-to-be, the precepts of rational ethics and man-as-he-could-be-if-he-realized-his-essential-nature. Since the Enlightenment abandoned the last element of the scheme, its project could not stand. Contemporary moral debates confirm the fundamental weakness of the Enlightenment reason which is unable to resolve any moral disagreement. Emotivism tries to explain that situation saying that our moral judgments cannot be true or false for they are only expressions of attitude and feeling. In any moral debate we cannot use objective and impersonal standards because they do not exist. What we can do instead is attempt to manipulate others in order to produce in them the same feelings and attitudes. In today’s liberalism we discover the work of the Enlightenment reason and echo of its consequence which is emotivism. Liberalism asserts that we are unable to reach the truth about the good of human life. Instead of discussing that problem interminably we should put it aside and only establish frames within which everybody can live his or her concept of the good life. Such solution is nevertheless misleading because it conceals the essential thing that liberalism under the cloak of neutral procedures promotes its own concept of the good life based on autonomy. It is hard to find any contemporary moral debate in which liberalism is not involved by giving specific and highly controversial solutions, f. e. education or abortion. It would like to play a part of arbiter but in fact it represents the side in the dispute.