2. Macintyre’s Moral Approach in Relation to Aristotelianism and Thomism

In After Virtue, one of MacIntyre’s central theses is that contemporary thinkers are experiencing the effects of a longstanding disruption in their moral language and moral analyses (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1984/2007, pp. 3–5, 39, 55, 59–60, 68, 72, 110–111, 226).Footnote ¹ Contemporary moral approaches have become separated from their original Aristotelian-Christian social and intellectual context and thus constitute fragmented and ultimately incoherent formulations. It seems that the core of the alleged shift, as envisioned by MacIntyre, proceeded from a certain teleological and theological tradition, with its conception of human nature and relations, to a non-teleological and non-theological conception of the same (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1984/2007, pp. 39–61, especially pp. 53–54, 59–60).Footnote ² However, it must also be said that MacIntyre provides a less than clear presentation of the alleged disruption and shift. The notion that there can exist a body of viable meaning of basic moral values behind what philosophers and the general population take to be their meaning is fascinating, though it did not originate with MacIntyre. MacIntyre acknowledges that G. E. M. Anscombe presented it briefly, and in a very similar fashion, back in the 1950s; and it should be pointed out that the basic notion can be traced back to Friedrich Nietzsche.Footnote ³

MacIntyre’s notion of a “practice” plays a central role in his account of morality. He defines practice as

Examples of practices are many and varied: teaching activities within a scholarly discipline, chess playing, fishing done by a fishing fleet, etc. In After Virtue, MacIntyre proposes to follow, broadly speaking, Aristotle’s virtue ethics theory, but with his own twist in which an account of the moral virtues is to be formulated in terms of social practices within societies (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1984/2007, p. 187). In After Virtue, MacIntyre formulates what he calls “a partial and tentative definition of virtue” (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1984/2007, p. 191), which goes as follows: an acquired human quality the exercise and possession of which tends to enable humans to achieve those goods that are internal to practices and the lack of which effectively prevents humans from achieving any such goods (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1984/2007, p. 191). He argues that if we look at the kinds of relationship without which practices cannot be sustained, we find the virtues of justice, courage, and truthfulness. These virtues are excellences within practices, whatever our society’s particular codes may be or whatever our private moral standpoint. (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1984/2007, p. 193). MacIntyre maintains, however, that this is only the first stage in the logical development of virtue and that each of three stages presupposes the preceding one (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1984/2007, pp. 186–187).

Later on in After Virtue, MacIntyre points to the second stage in the logical development of virtue. At this stage, virtue is described in terms of dispositions that sustain practices and that sustain us in our quest for the good, by enabling us to overcome dangers, harms, distractions, and temptations, and are dispositions that provide humans with increasing self-knowledge and increasing knowledge of the good (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1984/2007, p. 219). At the third stage, he finds that the purpose and point of the virtues include sustaining those relationships necessary for achieving the variety of goods internal to practices, sustaining the form of an individual life in which an individual might seek their good as the good of their entire life, and in sustaining the traditions that provide individual lives and practices with their necessary historical context. In this regard, MacIntyre argues that the lack of certain virtues will corrupt traditions along with the practices and institutions that derive their life from the traditions (McIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1984/2007, p. 223). In After Virtue, he is not going beyond practices, traditions, etc., and trying to develop an account of the natural or metaphysical contents of “the good,” which humans supposedly seek. MacIntyre would later go beyond practices and traditions and would attempt to incorporate some Aristotelian and Thomist metaphysical elements into his own moral account.Footnote ⁴ As an example of the latter, we find him maintaining, in his 2016 book, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, that there are goods, central to our lives, over and above the goods that are internal to practices. In that regard, he cites friendship as one example of such a good (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2016, p. 52). Given that Aristotle takes friendship to be a basic good and probably also a virtue (Aristotle, 2001c, Book 2, Chapters 7–8, 1108a 25–1108b 30), MacIntyre is moving beyond After Virtue by acknowledging this basic good as over and above goods internal to social practices.

According to After Virtue, the existence, definition, and application of the moral virtues depend on practices and their place within the Aristotelian-Christian tradition (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1984/2007, pp. 126–127, 186–187, 191). We cannot possess the virtues except as part of a tradition in which we inherit our understanding of them from predecessors (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1984/2007, p. 127). The social practices that are central to MacIntyre’s virtue ethics approach, must, as he himself tells it, be located within specific social arrangements and traditions. Although, in After Virtue, he takes Aristotle to be a major influence on his moral approach, in later works, he also acknowledges Aquinas as a major influence in that regard.Footnote ⁵ But notice that his acceptance of an Aristotelian-Thomist tradition requires him to pattern his account of human beings and their interactions within the general confines of the teleological approaches of Aristotle and Aquinas. Are their teleological approaches consistent with his point that the existence and definition of the moral virtues (usually?) depend on practices and their place within one’s tradition, and, more recently, also on certain metaphysical considerations concerning human nature?

It seems that from the perspective of an Aristotelian-Thomist morality, the justificatory and ontological basis for the moral virtues and other basic moral values would neither require nor even typically rely on social practices, the latter of which, after all, are subject to change. MacIntyre, himself, says that practices do not have permanently fixed goals. He finds that the goals within practices are transmuted by the history of the activity in question and that every practice has its own history (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1984/2007, pp. 193–194). However, according to Aristotle and Aquinas, it is universal nature in concert with certain other metaphysical considerations that provide the requisite justificatory and ontological bases for the moral virtues. Now, consider MacIntyre’s contention that the approach within the Aristotelian-Christian tradition towards human beings and their interactions presupposes more than merely a notion of human nature as it is, but also a notion of human nature as it could be if the relevant moral rules or principles are followed (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1984/2007, pp. 52–53). One can question this interpretation of Aristotelian-Christian morality. It looks like Aquinas’s position on the matter would be that character can be altered, but human nature cannot. He believes that over time, a human being can build up virtues, vices, and various other habits and capabilities (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas2017, I–II, Q. 92, a. 1), but that human nature provides a stable basis for arriving at basic moral principles, principles that must regulate one’s actions if one is to acquire the moral virtues (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas2017, I–II, Q. 91, aa. 1, 2; I–II, Q. 94, aa. 2–4). Moreover, according to Aquinas, human nature already is oriented towards God (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas2017, I–II, Q. 91, aa. 1, 2, I–II, Q. 94, a. 2). It thus appears that Aquinas would frown on MacIntyre’s attempt to carve out a large space in which socially established practices, along with the provisional nature of the considerations they carry, shape our moral thinking in significant ways, an attempt that includes MacIntyre’s claim that human beings can alter their very nature. Instead, it is a human being’s actions, habits, and dispositions that might need changing.

Human nature does not seem to be malleable in Aristotle’s ethics, either. According to his Nicomachean Ethics, human nature is to be explained in terms of a human soul within which there is a nutritive part or function that enables growth, another part or function that enables sense perception, and yet another that enables rational activity.Footnote ⁶ Aristotle explains human nature in terms of the natural function of the human species. And he tells us that the characteristic function of the human being, which is not shared with plants and animals, consists in the activity of the rational part of the soul in accordance with virtue (Aristotle, 2001c, Book 1, Chapter 7, 1097b 22–1098a 20; Hardie, Reference Hardie1980, pp. 68, 73–74). So, for Aristotle, rational activity, the highest of the three activities of the human being, is a natural function. Even later on in the Nicomachean Ethics, when Aristotle suggests that certain aspects of a human being’s rational activities are shared with the gods or greatly resemble certain rational activities of the gods (Aristotle, 2001c, Book 10, Chapter 7, 1177b 26–1178a 7, Book 10, Chapter 8, 1178b 20–27, Book 10, Chapter 8, 1179a 23–29), the natural capacity to engage in rational activities already would be present within the human being. That capacity might stand in need of development to its full potential, but the natural structure for such development is already in place.

It might be that, in order to adopt an Aristotelian-Thomist moral approach, MacIntyre would have to acknowledge that human nature and basic human goods, such as basic moral virtues, are not based on considerations that are relative to specific social practices, societies, and traditions, but, instead, on teleological features of the universe in conjunction with the structure of human nature. According to this line of analysis, the excellence of social practices and structures would be based on first principles, that is, on certain features of a Christian God and on the end-oriented way that things operate within a God-created universe. The structure of human nature would be explained in terms of features of the human being qua human being, not of the human being qua their specific social roles. For example, thinkers within the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition might very well say that if a human being, who had not yet acquired the moral virtues, realized that they were alone and isolated permanently on some island, they still would have a natural capacity, and a moral duty, to develop their character so that they achieve, for instance, temperance in their eating habits as well as wisdom in their search for the truth about worldly and other-worldly matters.

In his early work, After Virtue, Macintyre attempted to provide his own Aristotelian teleological account of ethics but in sociological terms (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1984/2007, pp. 215–225), after he had eliminated Aristotle’s metaphysical biology (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1984/2007, p. 162). According to Christopher Stephen Lutz, one of the reasons behind MacIntyre’s radical surgery is that Aristotle’s metaphysical biology had been contradicted in later time periods by a number of scientific advances (Lutz, Reference Lutz2012, pp. 174–175).Footnote ⁷ For instance, Aristotle held that a “human being” consists of form and matter, and he maintained that this form is unchanging, and he possibly also held that it is immaterial (Aristotle, 2001a, Book 2, Chapter 1, 412a 1–412b 13; Aristotle, 2001b, Book 7, Chapter 10, 1036a 26–1036b 7; Guthrie, Reference Guthrie1975, pp. 128–129). This form, according to Aristotle, is oriented towards God or the eternal (Aristotle, 2001a, Book 2, Chapter 4, 415b 1–8; Guthrie, Reference Guthrie1975, p. 132). Based on these points, Aristotle might have believed, as Lutz interprets him (Lutz, Reference Lutz2004, pp. 133–134), that the form of the human being is eternal. Lutz maintains that one of the aforementioned scientific advances can be found in Darwinian science, which, Lutz suggests, contradicted Aristotle’s account of “form” by providing an account of evolutionary biology in which species can eventually evolve into other species (Blackledge, Reference Blackledge, Bielskis, Leontsini and Knight2020, p. 232; Lutz, Reference Lutz2012, pp. 174–175).Footnote ⁸ Another reason for MacIntyre’s removal of Aristotle’s metaphysical biology is the former’s view that it was bound up with Aristotle’s defence of slavery, the downgrading of the status of women, and other exclusionary, degrading, and exploitative stances (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1988, pp. 104–105; MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1999, pp. 6–7). In later work, MacIntyre decided that he could not completely omit Aristotle’s metaphysical biology from his moral approach, so he attempted (in a slipshod way, we will see) to incorporate elements of Aristotle’s (and Aquinas’s) metaphysics into his own teleological moral account. Lutz argues, however, that MacIntyre’s shift does not alter his argument in After Virtue (Lutz, Reference Lutz2012, p. 121), which, according to the former, is that it is possible to find some truth about morality and politics in the qualities of character that enhance human agencies and freedom (Lutz, Reference Lutz2012, pp. 1, 121). But I would think that prior to completing a metaphysical biology, which in Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s respective systems includes a characterization of human nature and psychology, MacIntyre could neither justify his selection of Aristotelian or Thomist moral virtues nor explain the role that they are to play in morality and politics.

In defence of MacIntyre, Lutz argues that there is no conflict between MacIntyre’s omission of Aristotle’s metaphysical biology and his adoption of an Aristotelian-Thomist teleology, given that MacIntyre and other Thomists see creation by God as a crucial feature of the structure of reality. Lutz argues that creation, not Aristotelian metaphysical biology, is the real presupposition behind Aquinas’s conception of human teleology (Lutz, Reference Lutz2004, p. 138). However, Lutz and everyone else should also keep in mind, as we will later see, that Aquinas and Aristotle provided very different accounts of “God” and thus very different accounts of “form,” which each of them believes orients the human being towards “God.” Lutz overlooks some vital material in Aquinas’s account of human nature, which (account) can be summarized as follows: an individual human being is a composite of form and matter. The form of an individual human being is the intelligible structure of that human being (Copleston, Reference Copleston1955, p. 86). A human being is more than an amalgam of physical organs (eyes, ears, etc.). For instance, when an individual human being sees something, we do not say that their eyes see it, but that the human being sees it (Bobik, Reference Bobik1965, pp. 145–146; McCabe, Reference McCabe and Kenny1976, pp. 298–299). Moreover, form is that in virtue of which something is (Bobik, Reference Bobik1965, p. 73; Copleston, Reference Copleston1955, p. 86; McCabe, Reference McCabe and Kenny1976, p. 301). Form is the reason that matter is such as it is (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas2017, I, Q. 76, a. 5). Form inheres in matter (Bobik, Reference Bobik1965, p. 74; McInerny, Reference McInerny1992, p. 79). Matter exists for the sake of form, and not form for the sake of matter (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas2017, I, Q. 89, a. 1). The form of the human being also determines their species, “human being” (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas2017, I, Q. 76, a. 1; Copleston, Reference Copleston1955, pp. 90–91; McCabe, Reference McCabe and Kenny1976, pp. 299, 301; McInerny, Reference McInerny1992, p. 80). And the matter of the human being is what differentiates one individual human being from another (Bobik, Reference Bobik1965, pp. 222–223) — though each human being (in this life) is encountered as something that has both body and soul, the soul being identified with the form (Bobik, Reference Bobik1965, pp. 223, 236; Copleston, Reference Copleston1955, p. 155). In Aquinas (Copleston, Reference Copleston1955, pp. 91–92), F. C. Copleston finds Aquinas’s position to be that the matter of something is primarily the principle of individuation between things; between, say, one rock and another, one chair and another, and between one human being and another. For another interpretation — namely, that, at the beginning of the human being’s existence, the body is the principle of individuation between human souls and yet, at death, the soul does not cease to be an individual — see Joseph Bobik, Aquinas on Being and Essence: A Translation and Interpretation (Bobik, Reference Bobik1965, pp. 223, 226).

According to Aquinas, the nature or essence of something is what that thing is (Copleston, Reference Copleston1955, 96–97). And the nature or essence of an individual human being consists of a rational soul united with matter (Bobik, Reference Bobik1965, pp. 69–73, 145; Copleston, Reference Copleston1955, p. 91). Moreover, the soul’s nature always remains the same; (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas2017, I, Q. 89, a.1) the form or soul of the individual human being is permanent (Copleston, Reference Copleston1955, p. 162; McInerny, Reference McInerny1992, pp. 79–80). Finally, the form or soul of the individual human being is the very principle or source of the life and activities of that human being (Copleston, Reference Copleston1955, pp. 88, 164; McCabe, Reference McCabe and Kenny1976, pp. 298–299). The preceding constitutes a very brief and truncated version of Aquinas’s account of human nature. The point is that one cannot understand Aquinas’s metaphysical biology without understanding his account of human nature, and one cannot understand his account of human nature without understanding the vital roles that “form” plays in that account. One wonders how any Thomist could by-pass Aquinas’s metaphysical biology, given that this would eliminate the arguments for, and explanations of, what he took to be the nature or essence of the human being.

If we turn to Aristotle, we see that even though he differs in significant ways from Aquinas in his account of the individual human being’s form and matter, there are considerable similarities between his account and Aquinas’s. Aristotle holds that the form of the human being is the essence of the human being, or very closely corresponds to that essence (Aristotle, 2001a, Book 1, Chapter 1, 403a 27–403b 19; Aristotle, 2001b, Book 7, Chapter 10, 1035b 33; Ross, Reference Ross1995, pp. 177–178). Aristotle maintains that the form of the human being is the soul of the human being (Aristotle, 2001a, Book 1, Chapter 1, 403a 27–403b 19; Aristotle, 2001a, Book 2, Chapter 1, 412a 1–412b 12; Ross, Reference Ross1995, p. 140), and that it is the human being, a composite of body and soul, that engages in any practical activity (Ross, Reference Ross1995, pp. 137–138). The form of the human being is also the principle of the life of their natural body (Aristotle, 2001a, Book 2, Chapter 1, 412a 18–30). Also, as we saw earlier, Aristotle finds that the form of the human being is unchanging, and he possibly holds that it is immaterial. Moreover, he tells us straightforwardly that matter is the principle of individuation between human beings, whereas each human being has the same form (Aristotle, 2001b, Book 7, Chapter 8, 1034a 5–8). And W. D. Ross supports that reading (Ross, Reference Ross1995, p. 175).

MacIntyre aims at constructing an Aristotelian-Thomist teleological moral approach. Of course, this does not entail that MacIntyre’s moral approach would be the same as that of Aristotle or that of Aquinas. However, one of MacIntyre’s major unfinished tasks is to explain clearly what Aristotle’s ultimate ends look like, what Aquinas’s ultimate end looks like, just what is to be retained from each philosopher, and just how those remaining elements can be reconciled, developed, and worked into a coherent and credible teleological moral approach. That would be MacIntyre’s main task. Also, MacIntyre would have to analyze whether what he is left with from Aristotle and Aquinas really constitutes an Aristotelian-Thomist teleological moral approach. Aristotelians, Thomists, and others could then scrutinize MacIntyre on that point. It would be a major mistake for MacIntyreans, who aspire to be Aristotelian-Thomists, to ignore or marginalize Aristotle’s or Aquinas’s metaphysical biology, each of which provide some essential propositions underlying their two respective moral accounts; for example, that the form of an individual human being is that in virtue of which they are a human being (as opposed to an animal, some kind of god, etc.) and that when the human being engages in any practical activity, this is to be explained in terms of the unity of their body and soul. And that the nature or essence of a given human being is such that the soul, or form of their body, is unchanging and is oriented towards an ultimate end: Aquinas’s God or Aristotle’s eternal or divine. Aquinas’s position is that the form within the human being is generated by a Christian God who is the final cause of the human being, the final cause being the end for which the human being is designed to act (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas2017, I, Q. 44, a. 4). Similarly, Aristotle holds that the form within the human being is the final cause of the activities of the human being; the final cause being that for the sake of which something is done or the end for the sake of which something is done (Aristotle, 2001a, Book 2, Chapter 4, 415b 8–20). According to Aristotle, that final cause is oriented towards the eternal or divine. He finds that, to the extent that they are capable, the human being’s activities aim at the eternal or divine, which is that for the sake of which they act (Aristotle, 2001a, Book 2, Chapter 4, 415b 1–8; Guthrie, Reference Guthrie1975, p. 132). Also, he maintains that the existence of the form in human beings is ensured by God, and that God, as a pure form, is not the form of anything in the world (Guthrie, Reference Guthrie1975, pp. 131–132).

After examining the large role that social practices, history, tradition, and the contingent considerations tied to them play in MacIntyre’s moral approach, one is struck by the fact that both Aquinas and Aristotle think that human nature is closely aligned with permanent and determinate ultimate ends. In his Summa Theologiae, Aquinas explains that the natural movement of a thing is caused by nothing other than that which is the cause of that thing’s nature: in this case, God, who is the universal good. The human will is oriented towards the universal good. According to Aquinas, every good other than the universal good is something that is good only by participation in the universal good. Unlike the universal good, a particular good cannot impart a universal inclination to the human will (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas2017, I–II, Q. 9, a. 6). According to Aquinas, God moves the human being towards God, though a human being is also self-determining, that is, the human being determines their course of action by using their reason to will this or that particular end, an end that may turn out to be either a genuine or merely apparent good. In Aquinas’s estimation, without the universal motion that God imparts to the human being, the human being could not will anything (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas2017, I–II, Q. 9, a. 6, ad 3; McInerny, Reference McInerny1992, pp. 29–30, 39).

Ralph McInerny, an authority on Aquinas’s moral theory, explains that, according to the latter, human beings would be unable to desire anything, and would not be motivated to do anything, unless there were an ultimate end towards which they are naturally oriented. There must be a first principle that accounts for such desire and motivation (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas2017, I–II, Q. 1, a. 4; McInerny, Reference McInerny1992, pp. 28–29). Later, McInerny reads Aquinas as saying that the “human good” is comprised of a plurality of goods, but those goods are hierarchically ordered, so that there is a highest good (McInerny, Reference McInerny1992, p. 32). This highest good is God, and the object of the human will or appetite is universal good, which is God (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas2017, I–II, Q. 2, a. 8; McInerny, Reference McInerny1992, pp. 32–33).

Right after pointing to Aquinas’s efforts to establish that the ultimate good cannot be any created good, what McInerny then says about Aquinas’s account of the ultimate end is informative:

McInerny explains that the ultimate end is not something that Aquinas took to be vague and indeterminate. In addition to Aquinas identifying God as goodness itself, we also find him saying that God possesses Christian attributes, for example, the attributes of love and joy (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas and Pegis1975, Chapters 90–91; Aquinas, Reference Aquinas2017, I, Q. 20, a. 1).

One of this journal’s referees argued that Aquinas’s account of “love” and “joy” is basically the same as Aristotle’s, i.e., Aquinas is not referring to distinctively Christian attributes when he refers to love and joy. The referee argued that Aquinas thinks that love and joy belong to Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover. The referee also maintains the following: joy (gaudium) is just the pleasure of the intellect, and Aristotle himself says that God’s life is a pleasant intellectual activity (Aristotle, 2001b, Book 12, Chapter 7, 1072b 14–24). Moreover, says the referee, Aquinas also understands love to be a precondition for pleasure because pleasure arises when one attains the object of one’s love, and thus Aquinas also attributes love to Aristotle’s God. My response to this commentary is that although it is true that Aristotle as well as Aquinas present intellectualist accounts of love, Aquinas’s account of God’s love is profoundly different from Aristotle’s. Aquinas has a Christian conception of love. According to Aquinas’s conception of God’s love, God’s love involves God willing the good of each human being (as well as the good of Himself) (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas and Pegis1975, Chapter 91). In fact, according to Aquinas, “to love anything is nothing else than to will good to that thing” (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas2017, I, Q. 20, a. 2). Moreover, says Aquinas, God is willing the good of each human being, “as it is the good” of each human being. By that, Aquinas means that God does not love each human being “accidentally” (e.g., for their use value), but loves them “essentially” (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas and Pegis1975, Chapter 91). It is also important to note that, according to Aquinas, the God that loves individual human beings provides guidance and support to individual human beings and wills the good of each human being essentially. According to Aquinas, God promulgates the natural law for the sake of human beings, and the natural law is the participation of rational creatures in God’s eternal law (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas2017, I–II, Q. 90, a. 4, Q. 91, a. 2). Aristotle would not agree with any of those stances by Aquinas. It can readily be seen that if we follow Ross’s interpretation (in conjunction with what Aristotle said), Aristotle’s conception of God’s love would differ very significantly from Aquinas’s. In Aristotle’s account, instead of God’s love including God willing the good of human beings, Ross finds that Aristotle’s God is, instead, concentrating on only Himself (Ross, Reference Ross1995, p. 188). God knows only Himself (Aristotle, 2001b, Book 12, Chapter 9; Ross, Reference Ross1995, pp. 130, 188). In Ross’s interpretation, God is an unmoved mover (Aristotle, 2001b, Book 12, Chapter 7; Ross, Reference Ross1995, p. 185), and is not a creator of human beings (Aristotle, 2001b, Book 12, Chapter 7; Ross, Reference Ross1995, p. 189). In fact, Ross also finds that it is rare for Aristotle even to ascribe purposive action to God; instead, Aristotle continuously ascribes purposive action to nature (Ross, Reference Ross1995, p. 81). With regard to the referee’s suggestion that Aquinas’s account of “joy” does not differ significantly from Aristotle’s, see Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, where he says,

Note that, according to Aquinas, joy is caused by charity or love, which involves willing the good of the other human being essentially. Aquinas also maintains that

However, Aristotle’s God does not have a personal relationship with human beings. According to Aristotle, God knows only Himself, and thus does not have knowledge of human beings in general, let alone knowledge of each individual human being. Aristotle’s God does not will the good of each human being, as it is the good of each human being.

It is very important to realize that without a determinate ultimate end, neither an Aristotelian nor a Thomistic moral theory can get off the ground, since each such theory is teleological. The ultimate end not only provides the human being’s ultimate goal, but also the underlying starting points, motivation, and standards for achieving the realization of that fundamental goal.

The important lessons, severely neglected by MacIntyre, about the structure of teleological moral approaches can be summarized in detail as follows:

• According to teleological moral approaches, the ultimate end or goal of the moral approach determines the structure of the moral approach. The nature of the ultimate end or goal of the moral approach determines starting points (e.g., how one should begin an investigation into whether a certain specific action is morally right, wrong, or permissible) as well as intermediate considerations (e.g., the identification and application of relevant basic moral principles, rules, values, or virtues, etc.). A teleological moral theorist can determine neither the starting points nor intermediate considerations if the contents of the ultimate goal have not been determined.

• There is a chain of justification in a teleological moral approach: a specific moral judgement (e.g., “murder is morally wrong”) is justified by a moral principle or rule (e.g., “preserve human life”), which, in turn, is based on a basic value (e.g., “human life,” according to a natural law approach, or “happiness produced in a social group,” according to a consequentialist approach). The basic value is, in turn, based on what the teleologist takes to be relevant non-moral facts about human nature (e.g., the natural inclination towards human life or the natural inclination towards happiness). For some teleological moral theorists, the relevant facts about human nature are based on certain elaborate metaphysical considerations (e.g., according to some natural law theorists, an omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent God, who is the creator of individual human beings, determines the proper length of each individual’s life).

• According to teleological moral approaches, the motivation to act morally and to seek moral knowledge is determined, ultimately, by the nature of the ultimate end. For each action that is freely willed, there will be a motivation corresponding to a correct end, and usually this will be a sub-motivation corresponding to a sub-end. All morally legitimate motivations and ends are ultimately structured according to the nature of the ultimate end. Morally correct actions are determined, in part, according to the correctness of the purpose (goal or end) of doing the action, with the correct purpose being determined according to intermediate considerations, which, in turn, have been determined according to the nature of the ultimate end.

We can see from the above lessons that, for teleological moral theories, the nature and contents of the ultimate end determine what kind of teleological moral theory is being offered, determines the starting point for moral investigations, determines the moral principles, rules, virtues, or values as well as their applications, and determines the sub-ends or purposes according to which people are required to act. However, we will see that MacIntyre’s ultimate end is very hazy. And, throughout his large body of work, when he examines the ends of his own moral approach, it is unusual for his analysis to rely on, or even mention, ultimate ends. And never, within his own moral approach, does he rely on, or even identify, a determinate ultimate end, let alone provide a much-needed explanation of the relations between such an ultimate end, teleological morality, and human nature.

Aristotle and Aquinas each provide determinate ultimate ends, though the former might provide too many ultimate ends. Beginning very early on in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines happiness as “virtuous activity,” which includes courageous activity, temperate activity, and so on (Aristotle, 2001c, Book 1, Chapter 7, 1098a 12–18, Book 1, Chapter 8, 1098b 21–25; Book 10, Chapters 7–8, 1178a 1–1178b 32). We are also told that each of the virtuous actions are good in the highest degree (Aristotle, 2001c, Book 1, Chapter 8, 1099a 17–25). However, in later locations in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines “happiness” as the activity of theoretical contemplation, theoretical contemplation of divine or permanent elements within the universe (Aristotle, 2001c, Book 10, Chapter 7, 1177a 13–18). He further says that such contemplation is self-sufficient, complete, and good in itself (Aristotle, 2001c, Book 10, Chapter 7, 1177a 20–1177b 4). The problem of trying to reconcile these two accounts of happiness might, itself, be insurmountable for MacIntyre, who claims to be offering a broadly Aristotelian type of moral approach. Is happiness morally virtuous activity or theoretical contemplation, or perhaps it is found in some relation between the two? Aristotle’s commentators offer various strategies for attempting to reconcile the two accounts of happiness, a problem which, if left standing, threatens the foundation of MacIntyre’s account of Aristotelian virtue ethics. After all, it makes an enormous difference, within a teleological universe, whether the ultimate end (i.e., happiness) is the exercise of moral virtues, such as courage and temperance, or, instead, theoretical contemplation of permanent elements in the universe.

Much effort has been exerted by commentators in attempting to reconcile Aristotle’s two accounts of happiness.Footnote ⁹ One very significant question is whether the two accounts are even logically compatible.Footnote ¹⁰ In any case, whether the two accounts of happiness can be reconciled within a single teleological moral theory, Aristotle takes the ultimate end within each account to be determinate and substantive. Aquinas finds that the ultimate end is the determinate and substantive end (a Christian God), who can be understood as goodness itself and who possesses various attributes. Aquinas maintains that God and God’s creation provide the foundation for imperfect happiness in the present life, which, thinks Aquinas, is only a “participation” in true happiness (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas2017, I–II, Q. 5, a. 3). For Aquinas, God is the ultimate basis for the human being’s happiness, the latter of which is to be explained in terms of the human being’s relationship with God. “True” happiness, thinks Aquinas, is perfect happiness, which would consist in seeing God in an afterlife (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas2017, I–II, Q. 5, a. 3; I, Q. 12, a. 11). In the present life, human beings can only achieve imperfect happiness. For example, they can learn by means of their reason that God exists and that God has certain attributes (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas2017, I, Q. 12, a. 12). Human beings, also, can learn, by means of their reason, the contents of God’s natural moral law, with reason assisting them in building up virtues that enable them to follow that moral law. In a renowned passage in his Summa Theologiae (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas2017, I–II, Q. 91, a. 2), Aquinas says that the natural law is the rational creature’s participation in the eternal law (i.e., in God’s eternal reason). Remember, the ultimate and permanent ends or goals within Aquinas’s and Aristotle’s respective moral accounts provide the justificatory basis for their teleological accounts. If MacIntyre were to revise the ultimate ends of either of those two accounts, he would run the risk of overturning it.

Macintyre describes what he believes to be Aristotle’s use of the two accounts of happiness and their roles in the latter’s moral theory, but, unfortunately, does not address the fundamental concern that there might be a philosophical contradiction between the two accounts. According to MacIntyre’s interpretation, the virtue with which a good person discharges their social roles carries them forward to perfecting their own soul in contemplative activity (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1988, p. 108). In Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, MacIntyre finds Aristotle arguing that since the contemplative life is impossible without the life of political and moral virtue, the two modes of life must be combined in the overall life of the polis (i.e., city-state). And the ultimate final cause of all rational practical activity is the vision, insofar as it is open to humans, of what God sees (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1988, p. 143).

Kelvin Knight argues that the ultimate final cause referred to by MacIntyre, namely “seeing what God sees,” is not Aquinas’s final cause or end, which is “seeing God” (Knight, Reference Knight2007, p. 193). Let me add that even Aristotle would say that the human being’s final end is their theoretical contemplation of permanent elements within the universe. As limited beings, humans cannot see what God sees. And, although there are notorious unclarities in Aristotle’s account of rationality, he seems to suggest that human beings will not go on, as individuals, to survive death in an afterlife (Guthrie, Reference Guthrie1975, pp. 145–146, 157–160; Ross, Reference Ross1995, pp. 138, 155; Shields, Reference Shields and Zalta2024). Let me add that MacIntyre’s formulation of “seeing what God sees” would not be a correct description of Aquinas’s account of true and final happiness, either. As Knight suggests, the latter explains such happiness in terms of an imperfect individual seeing God in an afterlife. So, MacIntyre’s formulation fits neither Aristotle’s nor Aquinas’s respective accounts of the happiness of human beings. MacIntyre does not identify those discrepancies, let alone provide grounds for reconciling them.

When MacIntyre interprets Aristotle as saying that the ultimate end or “final cause” of practical rational activity is to be found in seeing what God sees, the former is likely referring not to a god (i.e., to a traditional object of worship in ancient Greece), but, instead, to the God in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. If this is true, then MacIntyre, who takes himself to be working within the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition, would face questions as to whether the God of Aristotle’s Metaphysics can connect in a meaningful way with human beings. Aristotle’s conception of God as pure form and pure actuality is far from the personalized Christian conception of the God of love and joy. In Thomistic Christianity, God plays a central and deeply personal role in the lives of human beings. MacIntyre would have to map out and justify the Christianization of the Aristotelian universe and of its God. Such an effort would raise deep, perhaps irresolvable, questions in metaphysics, physics, biology, politics, and ethics.

Let us get some idea of the extent of the hurdle that MacIntyre’s Aristotelian-Thomist approach would face when attempting to integrate Aristotelian metaphysics into a Thomist account of a Christian God. Providing a typical interpretation, W. K. C. Guthrie characterizes Aristotle’s account of the God of the Metaphysics as follows: God, as pure form and pure activity, is exempt from the process shouldered by human beings when they undertake any given task, of moving from potentiality towards actuality. Human beings are creatures who engage in a wide variety of temporal projects. Within each project, they must move towards actuality, towards actualizing some goal. But God, unlike human beings, is pure actuality. As a perfect being, God engages in eternal activity, that is, in eternal thought. And the object of the eternal thought of God can be nothing other than God (Guthrie, Reference Guthrie1975, pp. 138–139). So, Guthrie’s concluding point (with which Ross would agree) is that, for Aristotle, “God cannot care for the world: he is not even aware of it” (Guthrie, Reference Guthrie1975, p. 139; see also Ross, Reference Ross1995, pp. 130, 188). One of MacIntyre’s central theses, as we have seen, is that if contemporaries could understand the overlooked Aristotelian-Thomist social and intellectual context within which God and religion played major roles, this would facilitate their grasping the proper meaning of moral statements. But for this thesis to be credible, MacIntyre would have to develop an account of the role that God and religion are going to play in his moral approach. After all, as a kind of Thomist, he cannot afford to be saddled with an Aristotelian God who cannot care about human beings.Footnote ¹¹

3. Evidence of the Indeterminacy of “Ultimate End” in MacIntyre’s Moral Approach

MacIntyre paves the way for his eclectic moral approach towards ends or goods by hollowing out the notion of a “final good.” We have seen that in After Virtue, MacIntyre claims to be an Aristotelian (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1984/2007, pp. 118–119, 146–147, 256, 260), and, in later works, he claims to be following the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition,Footnote ¹² a tradition in which Aquinas made great efforts towards combining Aristotelian and Christian thinking. MacIntyre maintains, throughout the body of his works, that tradition and history are required for forming and developing any credible moral approach, including his own (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1984/2007, pp. 146, 194, 222; MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre and Cunningham2009, pp. 32–36, 39–40; MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2016, p. 57). MacIntyre takes this task to be part of an ongoing process of developing the ends of his teleological morality. So, MacIntyre is trying to retain his thesis on the development of morality, which (thesis) depends on his account of ongoing traditions and social practices (with the provisional considerations they engender), while, at the same time, trying to incorporate features from the objective and differing metaphysics of Aristotle and Aquinas. However, in facing that onerous task, he ends up paving the way for it by attenuating Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s accounts of teleological ultimate ends by undervaluing their contents and roles in moral reasoning.

In his article, “Rival Aristotles: Aristotle Against Some Modern Aristotelians,” he says that, according to Aristotle, when the latter discusses a person’s character, what distinguishes one kind of character from another is how the agent ranks various goods in their life and that each such ordering of goods embodies “some” conception of the good life for the human being. The agent will be incapable of justifying their choices until and unless they can justify some conception of the human good (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre and MacIntyre2006c, p. 36). Other remarks made by MacIntyre suggest that, when facing his task, he undervalues the contents and role of the teleological ultimate end in Aquinas’s ethics. MacIntyre says that a key feature of the medieval conception of a quest for goods is the understanding that without at least some partially determinate conception of the final telos, there would be no beginning to the quest. He says that according to the medieval conception of such quests, some conception of the good of the human being is needed (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1984/2007, p. 219). But even if his sweeping claim about the medieval conception of a quest for goods were correct, it would not help MacIntyre’s cause. The formulation that he employs — “some conception of the good” — is too vague and indeterminate to operate as a required feature of Aquinas’s conception of a quest for goods.

Further evidence of the imprecision and incompleteness of MacIntyre’s account of ultimate ends can be found in his article, “Ends and Endings” (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2014),Footnote ¹³ an article in which one would expect him to attempt the integration of metaphysics into his Aristotelian-Thomistic moral approach. In the article, when he explains his own moral approach, we find that, after saying that there can only be a final good if there is a distinctive type of activity of human beings the end of which is the final end, he then raises the question of what that activity is. He leaves the question unanswered and says that maybe we can approach an answer by asking, “What would lives be like from which that activity is notably absent?” (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2014, p. 815). Eventually, in that same article, he tells us, with regard to his own moral approach, that the final end can be only the good that perfects and completes our “flourishing” by furnishing our desires with an object whose desirability cannot be compared to any other. Although “flourishing” has been a well-tread description of Aristotle’s ultimate end, it is hardly, in the absence of elucidation, clear and informative. When describing his own moral approach, MacIntyre does not identify the contents of “flourishing,” nor does he identify the contents of “final end.” Yet he (pointlessly) raises the question, “But is there such a final end?” (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2014, p. 816). He responds by saying that this is a theoretical question that he will not pursue in his article. His position there seems to be that we must first describe the life of practice in its own terms (i.e., by forming practical judgements and making choices through the exercise of the virtues) before we examine how thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Aquinas characterized the life of practice in theoretical terms. We need to consider what place the conception of the final end (or ultimate good) has in the life of practice (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2016, p. 53).

One commentator attempted a MacIntyrean response to the objection that the ultimate end in MacIntyre’s teleological moral approach is very unclear and severely underdeveloped. This MacIntyrean response was that MacIntyre bases his account of the epistemological acquisition of ultimate ends on actual human experience, that is, on how human beings actually acquire knowledge. According to this response, such an epistemological approach requires a recognition that the human being comes to know ultimate ends in a piecemeal fashion, not, for example, in one intuitive flash of understanding. Moreover, before human beings can successfully embark on theoretical inquiries, they must begin by conducting their own practical inquiries, which involve forming practical judgements and making choices through the exercise of the virtues.

My rejoinder is that the objections proposed in the present article do not centre on the process of the human being acquiring knowledge of fundamental ends, but, rather, on the justification of MacIntyre’s moral approach — and not just any kind of justification, but a teleological justification. Teleological moral approaches are constructed based on the ultimate goal or end of action. Even if it were true that human beings come to realize the ultimate end through a lengthy piecemeal process in which they first make choices and engage in practical reasoning, etc., nevertheless, we have seen that a teleological moral theory cannot get off the philosophical ground without its fundamental justification, something that is rooted in its ultimate end. Moreover, it is not as if MacIntyre, himself, has been denied ample opportunity throughout the years to make choices, engage in practical reasoning, etc. before embarking on theoretical inquiry. Furthermore, he can, by hypothesis, get assistance from the formulations of those he wishes to emulate: Aristotle and Aquinas. Unfortunately, MacIntyre has not even gone as far as to depict the determinate ultimate end (or ends) of Aristotle’s moral theory in a sustained and clear fashion. Neither has he done the same with regard to Aquinas’s moral theory.

We have seen that Aristotle and Aquinas each espouse a teleological moral theory in which the ultimate goal and standard is the underlying starting point, midpoint, and endpoint for practical inquiry. When discussing his own moral theory in “Ends and Endings,” MacIntyre acknowledges that the human being’s relationship to their subordinate ends is always also a relationship to their final end (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2014, p. 817). Yet, we have seen that he does not there identify the contents of the final end and thus the key role that it is to play in carrying out and organizing moral thinking. Consider, also, his article, “First Principles, Final Ends and Contemporary Philosophical Issues,” the title of which would suggest a forthcoming response to the main concern of the present article. Yet, in that article, when defending the notion of first principles (which would be one or more notches below an ultimate end), MacIntyre’s view is that although there will be ongoing, long-term philosophical debates about the nature of first principles, we can construct a conception of them that is initially “tolerably coherent” (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre and MacIntyre2006a, p. 160). But, again, we can see that this is too lax to do the work of any teleologist, let alone an Aristotelian-Thomist teleologist. After all, first principles cannot even be identified without a determinate ultimate end. As we have seen, Aquinas maintains that a Christian God is the ultimate end for human beings, and that God and God’s natural order provide the foundation for the human being’s imperfect happiness in the present life. Let me add that according to Aquinas, certain truths, including his identification of God as the ultimate end, can be arrived at in more than one way: either by means of faith or, philosophically, by means of reason unaided by faith. The view that a Christian God is the ultimate end in the universe was held by Aquinas as an article of faith before he provided philosophical arguments for the existence of God and the natural order of the universe (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas and Pegis1975, Chapters 3–5; Copleston, Reference Copleston1955, p. 107). My point is that Aquinas begins his moral inquiries with a determinate and substantive ultimate end or good in mind. And he would have said that one cannot attempt a moral analysis of first principles based on a hazy and severely unfinished account of ultimate ends.

Knight surveys MacIntyre’s attempt to restore what the latter finds to be the acceptable aspects of Aristotle’s metaphysics. He explains that MacIntyre is trying to develop his teleology by adding considerations about human nature and metaphysics to his previously sociological and social historical moral approach. He further explains that MacIntyre accepts the history and standards of post-Aristotelian biological science right on down to the present day (Knight, Reference Knight2007, pp. 195–196). One of Knight’s general observations is that MacIntyre’s position is now that universal human nature constrains the human being’s cultural and historical specific understanding of goods (Knight, Reference Knight2007, p. 201; MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1999, p. x). Knight’s other observation is that MacIntyre is now saying that happiness, virtues, and human goods have a partial basis in social practices and a partial basis in a naturalistic account of nature, which MacIntyre frames in terms of an understanding of cause and effect (Knight, Reference Knight2007, pp. 200–201; MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1999, p. x), a more contemporary understanding which omits positing that there is an unchanging or immaterial form of the human being. But, recall that, according to Aristotle, such a form is oriented towards the eternal. We have seen that MacIntyre’s omission of a God-oriented and unchanging form of the human body would entail the elimination of Aristotle’s account of the nature or essence of the human being, perhaps fatally disrupting the latter’s teleological theory. This is far too much a departure from Aristotle for us to rest content with MacIntyre’s vague efforts to integrate some of his metaphysics into his own moral approach.

When it comes to integrating portions of an Aristotelian-Thomist metaphysics into his moral approach, we have already seen how MacIntyre circumvents or neglects that task. Another example of such neglect can be found in MacIntyre’s Dependent Rational Animals, a 1999 book which primarily focuses on the nature of human beings, and which emphasizes the natural similarities between human beings and certain animals. In the book, MacIntyre’s position is that human identity is primarily bodily (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1999, p. 8). In fact, he goes so far as to say that, in the present life, human beings are their bodies (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1999, p. 6), and later approvingly refers to rational animals “evolving” from primates (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1999, p. 56). Let us examine MacIntyre’s claim that human identity is primarily bodily. Is that view compatible with Aquinas’s work? Although we have seen interpretations in which Aquinas says that matter, not form, is primarily what differentiates this from that human being (or him saying that matter, at least at birth, distinguishes the form of this human being from the form of that human being), we also have seen him say that each human being is a composite of matter and form, and that the body and form or soul of a human being are closely connected. Aquinas’s view is that a human being’s body would not even be a “human body” (as opposed to unidentifiable matter) without the form of the body, which provides structure to the body. That form, according to Aquinas, determines the individual’s species, “human being.” Furthermore, that form is the source of the life and activities of the body. Aquinas also makes clear that the essence of the human being is not the body by itself; the essence of the human being is a form united with a body. For these reasons, it is doubtful that Aquinas would agree with MacIntyre that human identity is primarily bodily. As an Aristotelian-Thomist, MacIntyre needed to address this matter.

In Dependent Rational Animals, MacIntyre suggests that Aquinas would have had some sympathy for the view that human beings are their bodies. Before making this suggestion, MacIntyre explains that some commentators on Aristotle and Aquinas have underestimated the importance of the fact that human bodies are animal bodies and have the identity of animal bodies. MacIntyre then cites and presumably quotes (and apparently translates) a certain sentence in Aquinas’s “Commentary on Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians,” XV, 1, 11, which goes as follows: “Since the soul is part of the body of a human being, the soul is not the whole human being and my soul is not I” (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre1999, p. 6). I could not find this statement by Aquinas in Fabian Larcher’s translation of the “Commentary,” Chapter XV, Sections 1–11.Footnote ¹⁴ But even if the statement is somewhere there, keep in mind that the “Commentary” would not be a good source for Aquinas’s philosophical position, since its purpose is biblical exposition and clarification of the faith, not philosophical understanding. If Aquinas did make the quoted statement in his “Commentary,” and even made it in an unqualified way, one statement would hardly constitute adequate textual support for the very controversial point that MacIntyre suggests, namely, that Aquinas would be sympathetic with the view that human beings are their bodies. Moreover, Aquinas would not be making the quoted statement in an unqualified way. He would not have made the transition from in the present life, “the soul is part of the body of a human being, the soul is not the whole human being and my soul is not I” to in the present life, the human being is their body. What would it mean, in Aquinas’s estimation, for him to say that the soul is “part” of the body? Assuming Aquinas made the statement, it might have meant that form inheres in matter. Recall that Aquinas holds that the human being is a composite of soul and body. We, also, have seen that, according to him, although form inheres in matter, form itself is not matter, and it imparts to matter the structure that matter has. Without form, there would be no human body. Matter exists for the sake of form, not the other way around. So, if Aquinas would take form to be “part” of matter, he would do so in that very qualified sense. He would have denied that form is a component part of a physical human body. One of his arguments for his view that form or soul is incorporeal goes as follows: soul cannot be any kind of body (one example of which, according to Aquinas, is a physical organ such as the heart), but is, instead, an act of the body (Aquinas, Reference Aquinas2017, I, Q. 75, a. 1). Aquinas’s argument probably originated from the same argument by Aristotle that soul cannot be a body, since soul is an act of the body (Aristotle, 2001a, Book 2, Chapter 1, 412a 10–412b 1). Moreover, Aquinas maintains that form or soul, which is the source of human activities, is something that survives bodily death. All told, MacIntyre fails to address the fact that the above Thomist considerations point strongly against the view that human beings are their bodies.

If we now turn to MacIntyre’s acceptance of evolution, we find that Aquinas thinks that human beings are created entities, with each human being having an unchanging form that is closely related to their matter. Moreover, this unchanging form determines their species. So, it is doubtful that Aquinas would have endorsed evolution in which a species can evolve into another species over time, the latter of which is a scientific development dated centuries after Aquinas’s death. If, finally, we turn to Aristotle, it is doubtful whether MacIntyre, a self-proclaimed Aristotelian, could have made a reasonable case to show that the form of a given human being is a component part of that human being’s body (while each human being shares the same form). Recall that, according to Aristotle, the form within the human being is the final cause of the activities of the human being; the final cause being the end for the sake of which something is done. Recall, also, Aristotle’s view that the form of the human body is unchanging and is oriented towards the eternal. We have seen that he might, also, have believed that the form is immaterial. It is obvious that MacIntyre needs to further investigate his claim that a Thomist or an Aristotelian could say that a human being is their body and that evolution is to be accepted. All told, this is a failed attempt by MacIntyre to blend key elements of Aristotle and Aquinas into a naturalist or scientific account of human nature.

So, we have now seen how MacIntyre’s above views and suggested interpretation of Aquinas, as they are expressed in his Dependent Rational Animals, seem to clash with standard, textually supported interpretations of Aquinas’s metaphysics. Yet, MacIntyre makes little effort to reconcile his contemporary natural approach towards human nature with Aquinas’s work. Recall that Aquinas maintains that the form of the human being is closely related to God, a relation that MacIntyre does not investigate in Dependent Rational Animals. According to Aquinas, the form of the human being is generated by God, who is the final cause of the human being, with that final cause constituting the end for which the human being is designed to act. Keep in mind that the major tasks facing MacIntyre are not limited to harmonizing Aquinas’s metaphysics with contemporary natural accounts of human beings. Recall that MacIntyre must also try to harmonize Aquinas’s and Aristotle’s considerably diverging ultimate ends. And in articles where MacIntyre addresses ends, endings, final ends, and first principles, we have seen that he approaches that second task by hollowing out the notion of “ultimate end.”

Turning to MacIntyre’s Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2016), we find him referring, approvingly, to a God-centred explanation of the role of human nature in moral reasoning. There, when providing his account of rational activity, MacIntyre maintains that God is the ultimate or “final” end of all human action. Also, in his book, he presents his own views of goods, the good, and rational agency, all of which he labels, “neo-Aristotelian,” though he terms them in that way, he says, because he does not want to get involved in disagreements on how to interpret Aristotle. MacIntyre explains that although he believes Aristotle did hold the “neo-Aristotelian” views he presents in Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, it is the views themselves that matter most (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2016, p. 31). MacIntyre also says, there, that he considers his “neo-Aristotelian” moral approach to be Thomistic (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2016, p. 31). According to MacIntyre, an Aristotelian agent will attempt to become a fully rational agent. MacIntyre finds that in order to achieve this, the agent must have had a proper early practical education; also, among other things, they must have engaged in social relationships and must have engaged in the good of friendship. MacIntyre maintains that in their attempt to become fully rational, the Aristotelian agent will be developing relevant dispositions as well as higher-order desires (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2016, p. 56). MacIntyre’s stance is that the desires of an adult human being have a history, and that if they find a reason to reflect on that history, they will become aware that it is inseparable from the history of their tastes, affections, emotions, beliefs, and habits, as well as inseparable from their neurophysiological and biochemical development (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2016, p. 3). MacIntyre tells us that a “final good” is to be attributed to the teleological narrative or story of an Aristotelian agent’s life (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2016, pp. 57–58). MacIntyre continues by saying that this rational agent’s narrative will exhibit an increasing success in integrating the agent’s own pursuits of their various and valued individual and common goods into a unified pursuit of their final good. The final end can organize and provide direction to the various activities and their corresponding particular ends in one’s life (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2016, pp. 52–53). MacIntyre also maintains that this final end is the end of rational activity, and its attainment must involve the attainment of some high degree of self-knowledge (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2016, p. 53). Moreover, the end is such that it would complete and perfect the life of the agent who achieves it. The successful agent would not want or seek anything further than this end. The final good is unqualifiedly good and stands to other goods as a measure to that which is measured (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2016, p. 53). MacIntyre then says that this Aristotelian agent might or might not see that this final good consists in a “relationship to God.” This agent’s narrative will thus have a teleological structure, concludes MacIntyre (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2016, p. 57).

According to Lutz, MacIntyre maintains that “narrative” can include histories, myths, and theories, and that a narrative is constructed through the author’s interpretation of events. Lutz finds that narratives perform the very important role, in MacIntyre’s work, of specifying the principles, standards, methods, and purposes of practices (Lutz, Reference Lutz2004, pp. 43–44). In Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, MacIntyre’s position on “narrative” is that we tell, as well as listen to, stories about the practical aspects of human life, so that we may achieve self-understanding (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2016, pp. 236–237). However, he also finds that in our telling stories and listening to them, oftentimes the stories will stand in need of correction as to their veracity (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2016, pp. 236–238).

In Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, MacIntyre’s account of what he takes to be an Aristotelian-Thomistic rational agent could be interpreted by his apologists as his pursuing an Aristotelian-Thomist metaphysical biology, including a God-centred explanation of the role of human nature in moral reasoning. However, on a closer reading of that book, we can see that MacIntyre does not identify the final good, and that, due to this teleological lacuna, he is unable to develop his teleological moral approach. In his book, he refers, for example, to an agent’s final good, “as she now understands it” (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2016, p. 55). He then acknowledges the possibility that the agent’s desires and judgements might be pointing them in the wrong direction, “a direction defined by her relationship to that final good” (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2016, p. 55). But we may ask MacIntyre how any Aristotelian-Thomist could satisfactorily determine whether the agent’s desires and judgements are pointing them in the wrong direction if the contents of the “final good” have yet to be established? The final good towards which MacIntyre’s rational agent would be aiming would be porous and subject to change. For these reasons, the fundamental good or goal, within what is supposed to be MacIntyre’s teleological moral approach, ends up operating as a moving target. Another example of an analysis that circumnavigates a determinate ultimate end is found in MacIntyre’s statement that reflective agents initially apprehend the nature of the “final end” in and through their activities as rational agents. And he says that progress towards that final end is marked by unevenly and slowly increasing self-awareness and self-knowledge (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2016, p. 55). The problem there is that MacIntyre’s notion of a “final end” at which supposedly the agent is aiming might change over time; indeed, given that the formulation of it by MacIntyre is indeterminate, it can, and likely will, change over time as the agent pursues knowledge. We are thus left with no convincing reason to think that there will be an increase in genuine self-awareness and self-knowledge within the so-called “rational” agent. After all, this MacIntyrean agent might be acting according to so-called “moral guidelines” that have been incorrectly fashioned due to a porous and indeterminate notion of a final end.

It does no good for MacIntyre to say that the final good consists “in a relationship to God” (MacIntyre, Reference MacIntyre2016, p. 57). The correct interpretation of Aristotle’s God has not been sufficiently investigated, and we do not know whether MacIntyre’s God is Aristotle’s God, Aquinas’s God, or some hybrid of the two (if a credible hybrid formulation is even possible), or some other account of God. To what “relationship to God” could MacIntyre be referring, given that the agent would not know what “God” is? Let me also point out that if a teleologist were to try to attribute partial contents to the ultimate end, that would not work, since the contents of that “ultimate end” would have to be comprehensive enough so that that “ultimate end,” in relation to a credible account of human nature, could accommodate the range of basic moral principles and values, and could account for the correct moral reasoning and self-development of the human being. Moreover, the ultimate end also would have to be internally consistent. But how could one know whether the contents of the ultimate end were consistent or sufficiently comprehensive, prior to the identification of the ultimate end?

4. Additional Unfinished Tasks

There are yet other important inquiries that have been neglected by MacIntyre. He has not examined philosophical arguments for the existence of God, let alone arguments for the existence of a Christian God. Moreover, he would also have to defend his account of a Christian God against various competing Christian accounts of God. Another related and neglected issue is whether ultimate ends are rooted exclusively in this world or in some non-physical realm, or perhaps in some relation between the two. This general task would include MacIntyre working out a contemporary account of human nature and addressing the full implications of the alleged “form” and “matter” of the human being, to which Aristotle and Aquinas each adhered in each of their expansive metaphysics. And, if it turns out that their respective form-and-matter accounts are to be discarded, MacIntyre would then have to determine whether what he is working on would be an “Aristotelian-Thomist” morality.