Philosophy Conferences and Calls for Papers

For more than half a century Alasdair MacIntyre has remained a fervent critic of the structural injustices of capitalism. Indeed, nothing could be further from the truth than the all too frequent mischaracterisation of his mature ethical thought as a form of communitarian conservatism. Rather, from Marxism: An Interpretation through his essays for the New and Trotskyist lefts of the 1950s and 1960s to After Virtue and subsequent texts, MacIntyre has attempted to articulate and defend a form of politics that is adequate to the needs of radicals in the modern world. In his most recent works, MacIntyre has located a contradiction between, on the one hand, the critical Aristotelian distinction between people as they are and people as they could be if they realised their telos; and, on the other hand, the tendency of capitalism systematically to thwart people’s abilities to reach their potentials. Moreover, he has suggested that radicals need to articulate a ‘politics of self-defence’ rooted in practices that challenge capitalism’s economic goals, and which are thus utopian in a non-utopian manner. It is the view of the organisers of this conference that these three themes within MacIntyre’s thought – his ethics of human flourishing, his politics of resistance, and his practical utopianism – suggest a powerful contribution to the contemporary resurgence of radical politics. It is thus with a view to exploring the radical and revolutionary implications of MacIntyre’s work that we welcome contributions to a conference on the contemporary relevance of his ideas.