VIRTUE IN THE CLASSIC MORAL SCHEME NARRATIVES ACCORDING TO ALASDAIR MACINTYRE’S AFTER VIRTUE

Abstract

Each human life constitutes, according to Alasdair MacIntyre's thought, an identity whose unit resides in a unitary narrative with beginning, middle and end. Such understanding of each human person's narrative identity is consequence of a historic meta-narrative process, whereby MacIntyre recovers and rewrites the value of stories in one's moral education. MacIntyre permeates the narratives that based the so-called classical moral scheme, from Sophocles to the aristotelian-thomist tradition, extracting from them fundamental concepts of virtue. It is through this process, presented in this article, that it is possible to affirm that, for the philosopher, choosing a morality would be the same as choosing a specific narrative kind.