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3. Teaching Justice After MacIntyre: Toward a Catholic Philosophy of Moral Education
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3 Teaching Justice After MacIntyre Toward a Catholic Philosophy of Moral Education There can be no theory-neutral education into the practice of the virtues. Alasdair MacIntyre Preamble Thirty years into a career as a social justice educator, half of that directing and teaching in a Justice and Peace Studies program of a Catholic university, I have come to think of myself as something of an Aristotelian. I have discovered that my understanding of justice pedagogy is better articulated, at least in part, by the Nicomachean Ethics1 than by Lawrence Kohlberg’s philosophy2 and psychology3 of moral development as inspired by Kant, Piaget, and Rawls. Impressed as I have been by that tradition, it has helped me only marginally to think about how to prepare undergraduates ‘‘to be insightful, faithful, lifelong agents for social change whatever their career or profession,’’ as my program professes to do. Two questions have dominated my reflection: (1) How is a commitment to the difficult work of social justice provoked in the first place? and (2) How is that commitment sustained over a lifetime? The philosopher Gabriel Marcel provides a pointed answer to the first question: ‘‘Through personal encounter. Nothing else ever changes anyone in any important way.’’4 Want to provoke a new openness to questions of social justice? Then offer opportunities for personal encounter with the victims of injustice. But after an initial commitment to social justice is born, how do any of us make this a defining pattern of our lives over the long haul? 兩 39 兩 40 兩 Foundations That would seem to be a matter of character, and that calls our attention to the Aristotelian tradition in ethics, a perspective that Kohlberg early in his career famously dismissed as a relativist ‘‘bag of virtues’’5 although he later had second thoughts.6 No one, as far as I am aware, provides as much insight into the challenge of the contemporary appropriation of this tradition as Alasdair MacIntyre. Although a moral philosopher rather than a moral educator, MacIntyre’s critique of the failure of the Enlightenment Project to construct a rationally based universal ethic, coupled with his critique of the modern nation-state of liberal capitalism as antithetical to the practice of virtue for the common good, provides a challenging if controversial context in which Catholic educators might think about justice pedagogy today. (I will use the terms moral education and justice education interchangeably.) This chapter will proceed in five steps, each asking a question. First, are we all anonymous Aristotelians? I will outline MacIntyre’s argument in his article ‘‘Plain Persons and Moral Philosophers’’7 that Aristotelian practical reason is the best tradition of ethical practice available. This chapter recapitulates in highly condensed form some of the much more developed arguments of MacIntyre’s major books.8 I will then ask the question, how does MacIntyre understand the moral self ? That will introduce an explication of MacIntyre’s conception of personal identity as the narrative unity of a life formed by social practices , with their necessary virtues, within a living tradition of moral enquiry. But that raises a further issue about the possibility of virtuous living in our present context, so different from the Greek polis (political community) that gave rise to Aristotle’s virtue ethics, from which MacIntyre takes inspiration. That takes us to our third question: Are we all, or should we be, anonymous revolutionary Aristotelians? Here I depend on Kelvin Knight’s 1996 article, ‘‘Revolutionary Aristotelianism ,’’9 which MacIntyre himself10 recommends as an accurate depiction of his political views, including his belief that the practice of virtue today demands embodiment in local communities of resistance to injustice. But if that is his broad prescription for moral education, what is MacIntyre’s analysis of the actual practice of moral education in America today? That is the fourth step and final question of this chapter proper. [3.226.254.255] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 13:50 GMT) Teaching Justice After MacIntyre 兩 41 I pose a fifth question of particular pertinence to educators in the Catholic social teaching tradition: Can the language of human rights be legitimately preserved as central to programs of justice education despite MacIntyre ’s claim that human rights are no more real than witches or unicorns? I draw on the insights of theologian Fr. David Hollenbach, S.J., to answer in the affirmative. Are We All Anonymous Aristotelians? MacIntyre means by ‘‘plain person’’ a rational human being concerned for his or her own...