[This book] develops an account of rationality and justice that is tradition specific.-http://undpress.nd.edu.

A distinctive feature of modern capitalist societies is the tendency of the market to take over the production, maintenance, and distribution of goods that were previously produced, maintained, and distributed by nonmarket means. Yet, there is a wide range of disagreement regarding the proper extent of the market in providing many goods. Labor has been treated as a commodity since the advent of capitalism, but not without significant and continuing challenges to this arrangement. Other goods whose production for and distribution (...) on the market are currently the subject of dispute include sexual intercourse, human blood, and human body parts such as kidneys. How can we determine which goods are properly subjects of market transactions and which are not? The purpose of this article is to propose a theory of what makes economic goods differ from other kinds of goods, which can help to answer this question. (shrink)

The author draws on considerable research in this area to provide an overdue critical evaluation of the limits of the market, and future prospects for non-market socialism.

This paper seeks to evaluate the political dimensions to Alasdair MacIntyre's thought. It does so by examining his virtue ethics in light of the political vision set out in Dependent Rational Animals and elsewhere. Key to MacIntyre's project is a form of local community that challenges the modern market and nation-state. This challenge and its philosophical underpinnings situate him as a distinctive figure within contemporary democratic thought. Against his critics, a central claim is that MacIntyre does not fall foul either (...) of a nostalgic anti-pluralism or an unreflective conservatism. In fact, his theory is amenable to the idea of a non-subjectivist pluralism and displays a highly sophisticated understanding of the processes of change and critique. There are, however, significant problems. These spring from MacIntyre's excessive hostility to modern liberal realities. A near totalising critique, it threatens not only to undercut his Aristotelian philosophy of practice, but also leads him to an insupportable bifurcation of state and community. As regards the state, civil liberty, and distributive justice, MacIntyre can avoid self-contradiction and a despairing purism only if he takes a more moderate stance. (shrink)

After exploring MacIntyre’s (1985) practice—institution distinction, the article demonstrates its applicability to business-as-practice and to corporations as institutions. It then considers the implications of MacIntyre’s schema to ethical schizophrenia, to the claim that themarket is a source of the virtues and to the opposite claim that capitalism corrodes character. A fully worked out modern virtue ethics, based on MacIntyre’s work, is then established and the claim is made and substantiated that such an understanding of MacIntrye’s work revitalises it and makes (...) it directly applicable to business and to corporations. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre condemns modern politics, specifically liberalism and the institutions of the liberal state, as irredeemably fallen. His core argument is that the liberal state encourages a disempowering ?compartmentalization? of people's everyday roles and activities that undermines the intersubjective conditions of human flourishing. MacIntyre's alternative is an Aristotelian politics centred on the notion of ?practice.? Defined by justice and solidarity, this politics can only be realized, he claims, within local communities which oppose and resist the dictates of the administrative state (...) and capitalist market. Here it is argued that MacIntyre's notion of ?practice? represents a compelling ethical-political ideal. However, the belief that this ideal is best realized within local communities is rejected. In privileging local community, MacIntyre relies on a reductive view of modern states and overlooks the institutional conditions of a just polity. Against this, it is argued that a politics of human flourishing cannot succeed without an emancipatory transformation of large-scale, trans-communal institutions, in particular the state. (shrink)

Political philosophers have again become concerned with the role of the virtues in justifying social, political, and economic arrangements, and have explored the issue of which institutions can provide space for the virtues to flourish. In After Virtue, MacIntyre launched an attack on liberalism, arguing that the institutions it defends undermine the virtues. This paper examines MacIntyre's account and the responses it has provoked. It argues that MacIntyre makes an important criticism of liberalism that liberals have not yet fully answered, (...) but which also creates problems for his own account. (shrink)