16 quotes
But clearly if we possess such a standard, the commandments of God will be redundant.
After Virtue (2007)
At the foundation of moral thinking lie beliefs in statements for the truth of which no further reason can be given.
After Virtue (2007)
This time, however, the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been among us for quite some time.
After Virtue (2007)
We are waiting not for Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict.
After Virtue (2007)
Virtues are dispositions not only to act in particular ways, but also to feel in particular ways. To act virtuously is not, as Kant was later to think, to act against inclination; it is to act from inclination formed by the cultivation of the virtues.
After Virtue (2007)
So for Kant one can be both good and stupid; but for Aristotle stupidity of a certain kind precludes goodness.
After Virtue (2007)
Every action is the bearer and expression of more or less theory-laden beliefs and concepts; every piece of theorizing and every expression of belief is a politcal and moral action.
After Virtue (2007)
According to Aristotle then excellence of character and intelligence cannot be separated. Here Aristotle expresses a view characteristically at odds with that dominant in the modern world.
After Virtue (2007)
The virtues therefore are to be understood as those dispositions which will not only sustain practices and enable us to achieve the goods internal to practices.
After Virtue (2007)
Why should we think about our modern use of good, right and obligatory in any different way from that in which we think about late eighteenth-century Polynesian uses of taboo?
After Virtue (2007)
To cry out that the emperor had no clothes on was at least to pick on one man only to the amusement of everyone else; to declare that almost everyone is dressed in rags is much less likely to be popular.
After Virtue (2007)
The nature of any society therefore is not to be deciphered from its laws alone, but from those understood as an index of its conflicts. What our laws show is the extent and degree to which conflict has to be suppressed.
After Virtue (2007)
Belief in managerial expertise is then, on the view I have taken,very like what belief in God was thought to be by Carnap and Ayer. It is one more illusion and a peculiarly modern one, the illusion of a power not ourselves that claims to make for righteousness.
After Virtue (1981)
I have confronted theoretical positions whose protagonists claim that what I take to be historically produced characteristics of what is specifically modern are in fact the timelessly necessary characteristics of all and any moral judgment, of all and any selfhood.
After Virtue (2007)
A striking feature of moral and political argument in the modern world is the extent to which it is innovators, radicals, and revolutionaries who revive old doctrines, while their conservative and reactionary opponents are the inventors of new ones.
There ought not be two histories, one of political and moral action and one of political and moral theorizing, because there were not two pasts, one populated only by actions, the other only by theories. Every action is the bearer and expression of more or less theory-laden beliefs and concepts; every piece of theorizing and every expression of belief is a politcal and moral action.
After Virtue (2007)