“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.

What determines an individual’s right to life, or the context of a “just war?” Is human happiness an attainable goal or simply an idle reverie? How might true equality exist in society without infringing upon the equity of others? The trembling ground of modern discourse indicates that at some point along the steep line of history, words pertaining to virtue came loose from their original definitions—the traditional, invariable basis underlying all words pertaining to morality is broken. Ancient Athens is far off our radar, but it's misused lingo dangerously persists (and it’s all Greek to our modern ears).

Nowadays, common understanding concerning questions of morality is difficult to envision, and entreaties on both sides of an issue appear equally sound and ethically viable. For this reason, there doesn’t appear to be what MacIntyre terms a “rational,” or a thoughtful and absolute way to resolve conflict. Differing spheres of argumentation stretch into infinitum as self-sustaining circles, never to touch or intersect with competing explanations or moral theories. Mutual understanding is as foreign in modern culture as the verbiage of “virtue”—a word that fell from its original roots in Aristotelian thought, through the grinder of the Enlightenment, only to tumble as incoherent shards into the lap of a distraught and confused modernity.

One of the most notable attributes of the tenuous speech surrounding matters of virtue and morality is its “conceptual incommensurability.” In the presence of competing theories on the same issue, neither side is able to win or triumph over its opponent with an explanation that makes sense on both sides of the aisle. One arguer’s line of thinking is perfectly self-sustained in the context of its initial assumption, so how she arrives at her conclusion appears perfectly valid. But when one side of an argument meets its match, it grows apparent that both lines of reasoning are only justified in the context of their original proposition—the arguments can’t appeal to an outer standard of morality; rather, they both posit a distinct “normative or evaluative concept” that prohibits their interaction with ideological competitors. Both explanations are irreconcilable in the presence of one another, leading to the sense that seemingly sound, morally justifiable arguments are nothing more than veneers of personal opinion.

As MacIntyre argues, in order to glimpse our situation for what it is, we must remove ourselves from our highly particular, historical moment in time. As difficult as it may be, if we wish to broach the true, inalterable essence of virtue and morality, we must put ourselves into the shoes of some very ancient and some other not-so-distant ancestors. Peeling back history to uncover the content of morality, we should slip on the dusty sandals of an Athenian and become a student of the able Aristotle.

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The accounts of seafaring military men and lovely, dutiful maidens fill the heroic tradition, spotting the cultural conscience of hearers and readers alike, including those lucky enough to be among Homer’s first listeners. In the verbose poet’s Iliad, believed to have been compiled in the 7th century, virtue is called “areté,” and it denotes proficiency in any kind of skill or action. According to classics scholars, the virtues of the heroic individual were tethered to her culturally prescribed identity and how she acted within that particular position—they were inherently communal and obligatory. Heroic characters thought little of questioning this “dikê,” translated by Hugh Lloyd Jones as “the order of the universe,” acting within their communities with the utmost compliance.

This seemingly spotless portrait underwent various changes into 5th century Athens, which pulled apart the strings of virtue to puzzle over the true content of “dikaiosunê” or “justice.” Despite prevailing disagreement over the content of the virtues even then, Athenian thinkers were adamant about one thing—whatever virtues are, their proper place is the “polis,” the community within which both people and actions receive meaning and value.

Virtue cycled through various permutations until it fell at the feet of Aristotle, the brilliant Athenian philosopher who gave classical philosophy a succinct explanation of the virtues in his Nicomachean Ethics. From this point on, virtue was posited as a course of action upon which a person may reach her “telos,” or the ultimate fulfillment of one’s humanity within specific communities or relationships. Virtue was guided by principles that rose above simple reality, and its power served everyone it touched.

When a person acts according to her sense of virtue, she acts “kata ton orthon logon,” or “according to right reason,” using her judgement to decipher the best course between two vices, or extremes. As opposed to the heroic individual, the Athenian isn’t simply prescribed a course of action but must set out upon a route for herself according to her own informed reason and quest toward virtue. “Phronêsis,” or well-executed judgement, is one virtue that unlocks the plethora of virtues we typically think of when pondering what it means to be a good person. Over time, a person’s initially wild or unrestrained tendencies come under the jurisdiction of judgement and contribute to a virtuous identity that may effectively partake in the polis.

Though the practice of the virtues both emulates and leads to the ultimate purpose of human life (which Aristotle said existed in the joy of thinking), it does so independently of that ultimate purpose. Virtue is practiced for the sake of the virtuous and the benefit of the polis. When an individual bends her desires to her reason and to what she knows the telos of a human is, she acts virtuously and gains fulfillment—a satisfactory byproduct of a life lived thoughtfully.

Though Aristotle’s teachings remain present in the decisive atmosphere of modern thought, his recognition of an overarching telos for humankind is largely absent. Moreover, his cumulative conception of virtue as reasonable action has collapsed as well, crumbling in a seismic shift that fractured the world with apparent insight: the Enlightenment threw Aristotle’s conclusions into ideological confusion, and the world’s been reeling ever since.

In an era of minds awakening to the bright light of scientific possibility, humanity’s telos fell into the shadows. As Newton calculated the laws of cosmic gravity, the role of the microscopic human grew unclear. Scientists and philosophers alike sought to put their abilities and the possibilities of the material world to the test, unfettered by past connotations of meaning and humanity at large. Primarily led by Northern European intellectuals and cultural figureheads in the 17th and 18th centuries, many thinkers of the Enlightenment sought to identify an explainable reason for moral action in the absence of the seemingly limiting worlds of religion and tradition—a quest that resulted in philosophical shortcomings that pervade cultural thought today.

Every philosopher’s insights built upon his predecessors’ during this highly impactful period in philosophical and cultural thought. Amidst the shortcomings of the philosophers Denis Diderot and David Hume to locate the source of ethical action in an individual’s desire to act properly, Immanuel Kant looked for a way to think of morality as an actionable response to human reason. For him, this sense of reason transcends fleeting cultural values into that of “universalizability.” This concept holds that an action is only moral if it is practicable by any person at any point in history—a pretty difficult theory to prove in the wake of the unpredictable variety of human life.

Inspired by these intellectual giants’ glaring oversights, Søren Kierkegaard laid out his own explanation for moral conduct in his work Enten-Eller (Either/Or). Therein, he declines Diderot, Hume, and Kant’s descriptions of moral conduct as reliant upon either desire or reason. Instead, Kierkegaard concludes that the decision to live ethically is simply a matter of preference, in which the individual chooses whether or not to recognize the place of right and wrong in the world. If a person accepts that the “good” truly exists, than she lives accordingly, but this way of living is optional—a proposition that chocks morality to matters of personal opinion and lifestyle. Kierkegaard’s existential worries are symptomatic of the Enlightenment period, and they obliterate Aristotle’s assumptions that virtue and true human value exist.

In light of each philosopher’s inability to justify human morality, the culture of the Enlightenment was left with nothing to fall back on. Without Aristotle’s firm acknowledgement of a human telos, and amidst the abandonment of Protestant and Catholic beliefs, human beings also abandoned their collective assumption that human purpose and virtue are idyllic goals to be sought. Where seekers thought they uncovered moral, individual enlightenment, they actually wandered upon epistemic disillusionment. In this wasteland, they misread their fall as a personal freedom, ushering in the presently pervasive age of the “individual.”

Society has fallen far from Aristotle’s idyllic conception of moral virtue, through the discombobulating ranks of Enlightenment theories and into the ideology of “emotivism.” This theory pulses through contemporary thought and consists of the pervasive belief that all moral meaning is ambiguous, propelled by a particular person’s self-justifiable, individual beliefs. According to the work of C. L. Stevenson, a 20th century philosopher and advocate for emotivism, a statement that refers to something as “good” is simply a more polished and persuasive way of saying, “I like this.” There’s nothing beyond the previously morally weighty term of “good.” Virtue and the “self” are vacant, outdated concepts.

The contemporary thinking of emotivism can be sourced to G. E. Moore’s highly influential work Principia Ethica, which took the intellectual world by storm in the 19th century. Moore appealed to a concept called “intuitionism” to explain an individual’s morality as a personal matter. MacIntyre asserts that modern-day emotivism “rests upon a claim that every attempt, whether past or present, to provide a rational justification for an objective morality has in fact failed,” leading practitioners to the assumption that the most significant aspects of discourse pertaining to moral action are how it appeals to the individual and how it impacts the listener. Within this understanding, words of morality function as ideological weaponry, swaying individual minds toward particular, impassioned opinions. 

In an age in which communal ties to a specific identity or cultural structure are largely severed, words that posit a merely useful reality of virtue are especially persuasive tools. MacIntyre identifies three central “characters” of the contemporary era who each encapsulate, enact, and promote a particular perception of cultural virtue. The characters of the “Rich Aesthete,” the “Manager,” and the “Therapist” idealize the aims of emotivism that cloak selfish coercion in the disguise of moral weight. Each of these characters employs the individual person to achieve a particular goal, using their impassioned discourse to ignite a similar sensation in hearers. In this way, they maintain their cultural appeal and occupy a deceptive throne of control over others.

The evolution of the individual’s notion of the “self” and the discourse of virtue are intertwined, producing today’s culture of “modern liberalism.” This liberalism is less associated with political parties than it is with cultural worldview—the disintegration of collectivity and the relegation of the individual person to an alienated function are the outcomes of a culture that’s forgotten the content of morality. Culture is stranded in the sea of itself—without an all-encompassing, communal sense of moral worth and the value of virtue, human beings captain their ships alone, struggling to steer themselves toward a moral landing place they no longer believe in.

What do we do in the midst of a fractious environment? Where do we turn when the traditionally fulfilling virtues are nothing more than words falling into societal silence? In the wake of the inadequacies of contemporary culture to identify human value and moral meaning, people must return to the Athenian lifestyle emulated in the thinking of Aristotle. Just as Aristotle and other ancient Greek thinkers upheld the polis as the sphere in which both the individual and moral virtue received validation, contemporary people must collaborate to partake in small groups of people or as MacIntyre writes, “local forms of community.” Whatever this looks like from person to person, these small segments of society should operate holistically and seek to practice true virtue for virtue’s sake and for the benefit of others and one’s own individual realization.

MacIntyre describes a cautionary similarity between contemporary culture and the culture of the dwindling Roman Empire. Before Roman culture succumbed to the Dark Ages, its people started to look away from the Empire as their source of meaning and provider of morality. As such, they developed alternate spaces in which they could live their lives apart from the Empire, allowing for their identities, customs, and beliefs to persevere. In these separate spheres, people practiced virtuous living and enabled their lifestyles to persist despite the oncoming Dark Ages. While the situation of the modern person isn’t nearly as grim as that of the disillusioned Roman’s, a lesson may be learned: To ensure the survival of concepts as scarce and sacred as virtue, morality, and what truly matters to the life of a human being, people must find or create their own groups—individual bodies of people striving to live humane and cooperative lifestyles.

These kinds of groups can be simple, but their function serves a great purpose—the preservation of a satisfied life and the continuance of moral action. Humanity does indeed have a telos, and the realization of such is intertwined with the lives of others—being “truthful,” “courageous,” or “patient” means nothing without the active participation of many people. According to Aristotle, all of life is a stretching toward “eudaimonia,” or simply “the state of being well and doing well in being well.” Without true moral living, this reality is illusory and humanity grows aimless and numb. If we want to find areté, we must discover it together, in the presence of others. Morality is a path best traveled in company, and its destination is timelessly fulfilling, both for the ancient Athenian and for the modern American, too.