READING GROUP
Fall 2025
One of the facts that tempts people towards moral relativism is that different societies and cultures sometimes think so differently about the question, “how should I live?”
Even professional philosophers often disagree about crucial questions. So why think there are moral truths? Wouldn’t it make most sense to think that such truths don’t exist at all? In After Virtue–widely considered a classic of 20th century ethics–the late Alasdair MacIntyre urges that this is too quick a conclusion to draw from the reality of moral disagreement.
But understanding why this is so will require a history of some of our major moral concepts as they were understood in the Enlightenment and, before this, by ancient Greek and Medieval philosophers. Ultimately, MacIntyre argues, the crucial way out of the impasse–of seemingly interminable disagreement–is to return to something like the classical accounts of virtue we find in the Greeks, especially Aristotle.
Led by Dr. Victor Saenz
