What You'll Learn:

“Justice,” “goodness,” “courage”: Words like these clamor through modern speech wearing the guise of moral weight. They might sound pretty to listening ears, but their beauty is often highly illusory. The words typically associated with moral action are barren, each echoing through modern-day discourse as if it has a purpose that, in reality, it no longer holds. What one person views as morally justified another views as ethically questionable, each appealing to entirely different, indissoluble realms of moral truth. Renowned philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre crafts a brilliant, unnerving account of humanity’s failure to speak meaningfully in the context of morality, tracking the evolution of that highly contentious word virtue across centuries of philosophy—from the pillars of Athens to the experiments of the Enlightenment.