Community thinking in Alasdair Macintyre’s political philosophy

Abstract

People can explore Alasdair MacIntyre’s Communitarianism, which is called
theories of self, ethics, and justice through the prism of community. MacIntyre is known as a
philosopher, a key figure in the recent surge of interest in virtue ethics, which was connected
to Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Emmanuel Kant, and Karl Marx. His famous works can
be listed such as Marxism: An Interpretation (1953), A short history of ethics (1966), After
Virtue (1981), and numerous studies on a wide range of topics, including theology, Marxist
philosophy, metaphysics, and the history of philosophy. In his theory of self, he advocates that
the community should be prioritized over individuals and opposes libertarianism; in moral
theory, he asserts that the public benefits must take precedence over individual rights and
goes against liberals’ viewpoints arguing that the priority of the right over the good. Besides,
in the theory of justice, he upholds principles of “justice as fairness” and objects to the principle
of equality of rights in liberalism. However, McIntyre’s theories of self, morality, and justice also
encountered certain insurmountable difficulties.