I find, on the whole, MacIntyre’s virtue ethics very agreeable; indeed, I was shocked to find an outline of teleology that was not immediately repulsive, much less simultaneously convincing and untroubling. He achieves this by describing the need for such a teleology in a way that I am at least not equipped to spar with and at most in a way that is, if not bulletproof, then easily adaptable to remain coherent. The need for this teleology is, in After Virtue, a product of the narrative structure of human life (which is nearly unavoidable). Humans inhabit narratives, and a narrative is no less than the unity of a human life from birth until death; therefore, a narrative, by virtue of its unity, must consider the future in its present. Otherwise, there is no point to any action. Such a teleology is also much more difficult to get carried away with, as it is tempered by the necessity of the virtues in maintaining the ascent towards that vague telos he describes, as mediated through traditions, or institutions. For without these traditions, one loses the ability to contextualize his life, and doing that makes his life unintelligible, which precludes any ability to attempt for and thereby achieve the good life.

One thing of note is that there is not a concrete highest good in MacIntyre’s exposition. The lack of a more definite highest good weakens this excerpt, but this is not an irredeemable issue. If one adds a highest Good of at least a semi-definite kind, one ends up with a vaguely Platonic ethics. However, if one adds that highest, constant Good and, instead of just describing the Good as the seeking out of the Good but adds that, while that Good is absolute but the ways of relating to or harmonizing with that Good are different, as consistent with the rest of the excerpt, one can both have After Virtue’s flexible teleology and remedy the weakness of his provisional highest good.