Original scientific paper
Is MacIntyre's Philosophy a kind of Realism?
Nicoletta Concu
Abstract
MacIntyre’s reply to the failure of the Enlightenment project has been labeled itself as a form of relativism by a good part of his critics, according to which, if the MacIntyre’s aim was to find a solution to the failure of the Enlightenment project, he would have failed. He would not reply carefully to relativism and perspectivism. He would not be able to build a convincing theory that escapes relativism and perspectivism, “the protagonist of post-Enlightenment”, but he would be a relativist thinker.
How can this mistake be avoided?
MacIntyre deals with this issue in different writings and he develops a new method of enquiry that gives an appropriate answer to the problems of postmodernism, that is, relativism and perspectivism.
Answering to this challenge, in his later writings, MacIntyre does appeal to Thomism’s synthesis and improves a concept of tradition as a intellectual inquiry, that is a background within which it is possible to explain the authentic meaning of the correspondence theory of truth where the first principles that lead the intellectual inquiry have a capital role.
The MacIntyre’s effort is thereby to connect his historical inquiry with the Thomism’s metaphysics.
It would seems then that MacIntyre’s philosophy can place within the realism position that it has developed as reaction to post-modernity.
Keywords
postmodernism; relativism; prospectivism; realism
Hrčak ID:
134468
URI
Publication date:
8.2.2015.
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