Alasdair MacIntyre (1929-2025)


Alasdair MacIntyre, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and Duke University, well-known for his work in moral and political philosophy, has died.

Professor MacIntyre wrote extensively on social, moral, and political philosophy. He is known for views which draw on historical and anthropological considerations and on traditions such as Thomism and Marxism. Those views include a virtue-based approach to ethics and what came to be known as a communitarian approach to political philosophy. Professor MacIntyre wrote several books, including After Virtue (1981), Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (1988), Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry (1990), and Dependent Rational Animals (1999). You can learn more about his work here.

Professor MacIntyre was on the faculty at the University of Notre Dame from 1989 to 2010 and Duke University from 1995 to 1997. Prior to this, he held positions at Yale University, Vanderbilt University, Wellesley College, Boston University, Brandeis University, the University of Oxford, and elsewhere. He earned his Master of Arts degree at the University of Manchester and the University of Oxford and his undergraduate degree at the University of London.

MacIntyre understood himself to be a nonconformist philosopher. In an essay about how he “survived” academic moral philosophy in the 20th Century, he says:

In moral philosophy, as in other areas of philosophy, much of what is written must go unpublished and much of what is published must go unread. What function then is served by this cruel academic treadmill?

Its function is to inculcate the currently established conception of the tasks of moral philosophy and of its past history. It is to ensure that habits of mind are transmitted, so that students by and large follow their teachers in their assumptions about which few books and articles must or may be read and which may be safely ignored. It is to make certain that the young recognize whose arguments are to be taken seriously and whose disdained, when and about what to make jokes, and at whom and with whom it is permissible to sneer or condescend. It is to shape minds so that they are open to some ideas and closed to others. Academic moral philosophy is a conformist discipline, and habituation in writing what is well designed to secure the approval of those with established academic power is one principal means of producing and reinforcing that conformism.

Two salient thoughts emerge from this narrative. The first concerns the importance for the moral philosopher of living on the margins, intellectually as well as politically, a necessary condition for being able to see things as they are…

A second thought, perhaps in tension with the first, concerns the importance for the moral philosopher of nonetheless learning as much as she or he can from those at the academic center, those who have made definitive contributions to the ongoing debates of academic moral philosophy. For interestingly it is often they who supply the resources that one needs if one is to free oneself from the limitations of their standpoint. If one is to evaluate both the achievements and the defects of twentieth-century academic moral philosophy, it needs to be understood both from within and from a standpoint that is at once external and radically critical. It is such a standpoint that I have tried to define.

He died on May 21st, 2025.


Remembrances and obituaries elsewhere:

Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre” by Christopher Kaczor at Word on Fire.
Alasdair MacIntyre Leaves a Legacy to Wrestle With” by Nick French at Jacobin.
Alasdair MacIntyre: the Original Post-Liberal Philosopher” by James Orr at UnHerd.
Postliberalism’s Reluctant Godfather” by Nathan Pinkoski at Compact.
Alasdair MacIntyre, renowned Catholic moral philosopher, dies at 96” by Kimberly Heatherington at National Catholic Reporter.
Alasdair MacIntyre, R.I.P.” by Robert Wyllie at The Lamp.
de Nicola Center Mourns the Passing of Alasdair MacIntyre (1929–2025)” by Kenneth Hallenius at the website of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture.
Alasdair MacIntyre Obituary” by Jane O’Grady at The Guardian.
Alasdair MacIntyre, Philosopher Who Saw a ‘New Dark Ages,’ Dies at 96” by Alex Traub in The New York Times.
Storyteller” by Raymond Geuss at New Left Review.

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George Gale
George Gale
16 days ago

In 1967 Alasdair made his first visit to the US, to take part in a conference at UT-Austin convened by Marjorie Grene, and hosted by John Silber. I was Marjorie’s student, and batman on the grant which funded the conference, so it was my job to go out to the airport and pick Alasdair up, which I did. He was wearing a nice tie, with a purple shirt, a combo I’d never seen before. Once we got into the car, I asked him if there was anything he wanted to do before we went to the site. And he replied, in his inimitable manner I got to know so well, “Yes, I’d like a real American burger.” So I took him to a Mickey D’s, which he much enjoyed. (Given the ‘quality’ of Brit burgers at the time, his enjoyment is understandable!) It was at this conference that he first met John Silber, Charles Taylor, and Bert Dreyfus, all of whom would stay linked one way or another together for some time.

The Silber connection was particularly interesting: after a day or so, it was clear that John was whacked on Alasdair. At dinner that night, he asked Alasdair “What would it take to bring you to Austin?” There was a brief soto voce from Charles and then Alasdair chirped “I’d like a small oil well.” John didn’t even flinch. He said “I’ll work on it.”

Indeed.

Cheyney Ryan
Cheyney Ryan
Reply to  George Gale
15 days ago

I was Alasdair’s grad student at Boston University. Silber may have brought him to Boston University, but after about a year Alasdair came to detest him. At one point, he told me that his goal in life was to pick a fist fight with Silber in front of the whole university faculty.

Brad
Brad
16 days ago

I remember reading and studying MacIntyre’s After Virtue as an undergraduate at the University of Toronto. It was so important for me in understanding the history of ethical theory, the appeal of virtue ethics, and the communitarian-liberalism debate. It was a book that affected me personally, rather than professionally. And it made me feel that philosophy was very important. Of course, I was aware that many were very critical of the book, and MacIntyre’s work in general. My own work has been largely in the philosophy of science, but it is still a work I would recommend to people.

Billy
16 days ago

RIP. When I was an undergrad at Notre Dame, I took a history of ethics course with Alasdair MacIntyre. This would have been in the fall of 2000. He was a great teacher, and I never had another teacher as obsessed with situating present ideologies within a historical framework or narrative. I was a second major in history, and I don’t even think my history professors cared as much about historically situating the present. He would even do this with answering questions: his typical method in answering questions was first to place the angle of the question in some historical context and then, after that, to answer it more directly. To some extent, this could be irritating. But it was also fair and appropriate, in that it acknowledged how historically conditioned our beliefs are. And, frankly, he was able to pull it off, just because he knew so much about the history of thought. I had other teachers whose breadth of historical knowledge was impressive, but at least with respect to the history of ideologies, his breadth of knowledge was the most impressive I have ever seen. 
 
In some ways he was very formal (e.g., he called us all Mr. X and Ms. X, instead of by our first names). And he was very serious about philosophy: it was not a game for him, but real life, the real life of the mind. Yet, he could also be very funny, and his sense of humor helped to humanize him. The Mets and the Yankees were playing in the World Series that fall, and before class one day as some of us were talking with him, he made it clear that he was for the Mets. Somebody asked him if he was a Mets fan. He replied, “No, I want George Steinbrenner to learn how to lose graciously.” Unexpected comments like that were common. He also could be kind and helpful, without needing to be. I asked him for a recommendation letter that I likely did not deserve, and he cheerfully gave it to me. I asked him to come speak to our undergrad philosophy club, and he cheerfully did it. One of my buddies put fliers up all over campus before the talk, because we were trying to get the club’s participation level up, as the club had been dormant for a few years prior. The fliers worked a little too well. So many people showed up (undergrads, grad students, professors from various disciplines) that the conference room we had reserved was overflowing. And it was a big room.  I moderated the question-and-answer session, and it was a chore, because so many people were eager to get their questions in. One final comment, and it goes back to his mix of formality and humanity: he wouldn’t email. So, my first instinct in meeting him as a student was that he would be inaccessible. But I found out that really wasn’t true. If I just bothered him in person in his office or on the phone, he was quite willing to be bothered.

Matt
Matt
Reply to  Billy
15 days ago

I majored in finance but really enjoyed philosophy courses. His first year at ND was my last. Unfortunately, I didn’t take one of his courses but I wish I had.

Go Irish!

Daniil
Daniil
16 days ago

As someone who came to philosophy via the study of the Past (through history and archaeology both), reading “After Virtue” was a wonderful experience.

I had become somewhat jaded with the fact that much modern English-language philosophy I encountered seemed to be disconnected from how we are and how we were, how we live and how we have lived — and instead seemed to be busy constructing frameworks in the sky.

And so I read a philosopher, from within the same intellectual mileu, for whom the Past was not a curiosity but rather one of the most critical components in answering questions of the human condition. And this was a liberation. It made me understand that there is another way to do Philosophy. That there is moral purpose in studying yesterday.

Alas — as Tom Angier wrote in “After Virtue at 40” — despite the book’s fame, it seems like moral philosophy mostly goes on as if it were never written.

Gus am bris an là.

Last edited 16 days ago by Daniil
Joseph Duvernay
15 days ago

On the edge, at some distance, on the margin post yourself philosopher, poet, as this teacher with and in his life suggested. And you just might be positioned to see a bit more clearly.
Never, if you’re able, shunt your honest observations/opinions. Develop and have soft feelings for Mankind.
Never, believe in staying in ‘your’ percieved by others, lane.
Everything you and those ’round about you, and afar, do/say is personal and political.
Own the planet and its life forms fiercely, because you do. Take moral, ethical part in its survival.
Stop those who take from Her and never give back!
Speak up now for our poor put upon Planet and All its inhabitants!

Cheyney Ryan
Cheyney Ryan
15 days ago

ON ALASDAIR MACINTYRE: Alasdair was my dissertation advisor at Boston University 1973 – 1974. My dissertation was on the role of ideology in economic theory, very much influenced by Marx’s views, but focusing on rather technical issues inspired by the “Cambridge controversy” over the nature of capital. He was an absolutely ideal advisor for that topic, as I imagine he would have been for any topic given his extraordinary breadth of knowledge. In my case, he even knew Piero Sraffa and Joan Robinson personally, the economists at the center of the controversy, plus he was then, as he remained, an authority on ideology in both its philosophical and historical dimensions. He was also one of the few senior philosophers in America at the time who actually knew a great deal about Marx. In our last conversation, he told me that he remained convinced of Marx’s critique of capitalism as an economic system.

To me, Alasdair’s importance was not unlike Stanley Cavell’s, insofar as his work––however one assessed its particular claims–gave permission to be interested in questions, authors, even other fields that more narrow-minded analytical philosophy otherwise dismissed. Alasdair was completely intolerant of the philosophical sectarianisms of the time, such as the dismissal of Hegel and other Continental figures. He once said to me that such sectarianisms were excuses for laziness, i.e. for not wanting to spend the energy to understand other traditions/thinkers. I think of this whenever I hear anyone express uninformed disdain for another’s philosophical perspective. He expected his students to be interested in everything; he famously deplored the pressure on young philosophers to specialize too early in their work. He recommended that no one be permitted to publish anything before the age of 35.

Alasdair could be gracious and forthcoming in his support for people, and not just as teacher to student. He called me when he heard that my father died when I was finishing my dissertation, and always began subsequent discussions with how I was doing. More than once his support was invaluable to me in the various political scrapes that I experienced, which in my youth were numerous. And he remained in his own way a fierce devotee of individuals and attitudes that were wrongly marginalized or dismissed. But Alasdair was not an exceptionally warm person, and in those years, I felt he was rather lonely. He celebrated values of community, but seemed change jobs and even cities every few years. I am so glad that he finally found the relationship/communities that he so treasured, though I had little contact with him in the last decades.

Avram Hiller
15 days ago

He was a professor at Duke when I arrived for graduate school, and I took several classes with him before he left for Notre Dame. I now hold views fairly close to those that he detested. But he influenced and helped me in some important ways.

Among other things, he read my dissertation proposal and gave more insightful feedback on the project than, dare I say, anyone on the committee. That’s maybe not surprising in itself, except that it was on a topic that I imagine he had little interest in, and no reason to know anything about (vagueness in the philosophy of language).

He said things to the effect that most philosophers have more to learn about ethics from Scottish crab fishermen than the other way around. (That should not be surprising to those who know his work.) He said that good people wash their own dishes. He was not shy in giving credit to those who influenced him. He loved Michael Jordan. He played a role in John Lennon meeting Yoko Ono, but he also said that no one seemed nearly as interested in the fact that he was a co-signatory (along with the four Beatles, as well as writers and artists like Graham Greene and David Hockney) on a 1967 letter to the London Times arguing for the legalization of marijuana. I never had the courage to ask him more about that myself.

He made students in his Aristotle class learn some Greek, which I resented. I even at one point resolved to dislike him for his general prickliness. It took me a while to get over it. I now think about what it must have been like for someone as knowledgeable as him (he seemed to have read everything) to be tasked with the job of educating comparatively ignorant grad students who lack both the patience to learn Greek and also the good sense to leave academia altogether and become a crabber. I learned to see that he was also very generous to us, in his own way.

His cultural critiques have stayed with me even though I’ve never been persuaded to accept his proposed remedies. And while I can’t come anywhere close to approximating his erudition, he shook me into at least working harder. I was humbled by him, and I’m grateful.

Last edited 15 days ago by Avram Hiller
James E Mahon
Reply to  Avram Hiller
6 days ago

We both remember his position on washing dishes, I see!

Richard Kim
Richard Kim
15 days ago

I met Professor MacIntyre when I was a graduate student at Notre Dame. He was an imposing and forceful presence: intimidating, yes, but also, as many have observed, remarkably generous. On the rare occasions when he expressed enthusiasm or approval for an idea, you could be sure he meant it. He never offered praise lightly. I’ve come to value that honesty more and more over the years.

His work has shaped my thinking more than that of any other contemporary philosopher. One of his central claims in After Virtue—that we inhabit a fragmented world, fractured by incommensurable values—feels increasingly undeniable with each passing year (and certainly with each election). His insistence that genuine learning and moral development depend on participation in a coherent tradition and a shared community oriented toward the common good seems, now more than ever, an urgent truth we need to recover.

Curtis Franks
15 days ago

Alasdair had so many friends and colleagues he was closer to than me, that I would rather leave the main line for them to develop. Here are three sidelines:

One time I quickly threw together and poorly advertised a talk on the history of logic in Prague, by Vítězslav Švejdar. A half dozen people showed up, and Alasdair was one of them. He had all sorts of questions and observations not just about historical figures like Bolzano, but about Vopěnka and the biographical details of some of the early researchers on large cardinal axioms and constructive mathematics.

Nearly everything he said in faculty meetings was both memorable and unexpected, but my favorite line was this: “I wish to advise everyone present that if we proceed with the course of action just described we will be committing a crime. It is a crime I am willing to commit, but let us not proceed unaware.”

He’s the only person I ever knew who described the author and readers of a NYT bestseller inspired by his words and ideas as having “apparently read nothing but that one sentence.”

With Karl Americks and David Solomon, who both also died this year, Alasdair was delightfully supportive of and attentive to me and my peculiar interests. I’m so glad I got to know these great people.

John Haldane
John Haldane
15 days ago
Irfan Khawaja
Irfan Khawaja
11 days ago
Aaron Garrett
Aaron Garrett
Reply to  Irfan Khawaja
11 days ago

That is a really wonderful remembrance. Thank you.

James Mahon
7 days ago

Alasdair MacIntyre spent five and a half years at Duke University (1995-2000); he joined the Philosophy Department along with his wife, Lynn Sumida Joy. I had applied to the PhD program at Duke in the fall of 1994, before he was on the faculty; I was subsequently told that he had participated in the review of the applicants that year and that he had spoken to them about my application, which had degrees from Ireland and England, but not the U.S. (the Philosophy Department at the time did not have not have very many international students). I credit him, therefore, with my acceptance for the PhD program. I was extremely fortunate to subsequently have him as my dissertation supervisor (1998-2000). Although I chose to write on ethics rather than early modern philosophy for my dissertation in part because of the job market, it was also in part because I hoped to have him as my supervisor. In typical MacIntyre fashion, he told me that he would only supervise me if I promised to finish the dissertation in two years, since he was going to retire and leave Durham, N.C., after two more years. (I promised, and I kept my promise). My dissertation was on the history of metaethics in the first half of the twentieth century, an area that he was intimately familiar with; however, I think everyone would agree that he could have supervised a dissertation on just about anything. Many years later, I was happy to rework one of the chapters of my dissertation into an essay, “MacIntyre and the Emotivists,” for a collection of essays in his honor (What Happened in and to Moral Philosophy in the Twentieth Century? Essays in Honor of Alasdair MacIntyre, ed. Fran O’Rourke (2013)).  

I took two graduate seminars with him while I was taking courses, one on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and one on ethics in the twentieth century (which was really on metaethics – hence my eventual dissertation topic). They were the best courses I took as a graduate student. Whenever I teach Aristotle, his voice is in my head. Again, in typical MacIntyre fashion, he did not assign his own writings in either course; the main text for the history of ethics course was a text by R. M. Hare. I believe it was in that seminar that he said what he has written elsewhere, namely, that Elizabeth Anscombe’s “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958) influenced his After Virtue (1981), and that he was sympathetic to Bernard Williams’ critique of “the morality system” – but that he wanted to historicize it. (In a footnote, Williams was later to famously compare himself to MacIntyre as follows: “If Taylor and MacIntyre will forgive my putting them into a mere cartoon sketch, one set of relations between our positions might perhaps be put like this: Taylor and MacIntyre are Catholic, and I am not; Taylor and I are liberals, and MacIntyre is not; MacIntyre and I are pessimists, and Taylor is not (not really)” (“Replies” in J. E. J. Altham and Ross Harrison, eds., World, Mind, and Ethics (1995), 222 n. 19)). 

MacIntyre taught undergraduate courses throughout his time at Duke and he did all of his own grading of undergraduate papers and blue book exams. The absence of any training for teaching and grading was one of the reasons I was never his TA (I don’t believe his TA’s ever guest taught a class with him observing them, as other faculty did), but I did sit in on an undergraduate courses on the history of ethics. He was wont to make the odd provocative remark when lecturing the Duke undergrads. One such instance was when he talked about the great city of Beirut and how terrible it was to hear about it being bombed, to which he added, “Why couldn’t they bomb… Houston?”

MacIntyre had Irish roots and had spent summer holidays in his childhood in Donegal. Because I was Irish, he would talk to me, in particular, about matters Irish. What alarmed me is that he talked about the IRA Army Council and what they were up to as though he had an inside line to their meetings (via Chicago, somehow). I hoped that here, too, he was being provocative, since I grew up despising the IRA. His Irish identity and interest in Ireland was completely genuine, however. One of my proudest moments was when he asked me to ask my father, a philosopher and scholar of Irish, whom he had met when my parents visited me at Duke, for the proper Irish translation of “Dasein.” In due course, my father replied with a short letter about the translation possibilities. Years later, when a collection of essays was put together in honor of my father’s retirement from teaching at University College Galway by his former students — essentially, a Festschrift — entitled Philosophy and Political Engagement (eds. Allyn Fives and Keith Breen (2016)), MacIntyre was kind enough to contribute an essay. 

Lest it seem from all of this that he gave me special treatment, I should add that one of my most ignominious moments at Duke occurred in one of his seminars. MacIntyre would often throw out a question to the seminar just to test how uneducated we all were. I sometimes survived the test (he once asked us what was the exchange between F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway about the rich; I (the Irishman) answered it correctly, and he then said to the rest of the class that they should at least have a modicum of knowledge of American culture). However, one day in the seminar he started to talk about Uriah Heep, and then pulled himself short. “In what novel is Uriah Heep a character?” he asked. Silence reigned. Something possessed me to pipe up, “Silas Mariner.” MacIntyre looked at me with that stern stare he reserved for such occasions. “That’s two books you haven’t read,” he said. 

From anecdotes such as this, it should be clear that he was very intimidating, even if he could be very entertaining. I never addressed him as anything except “Prof. MacIntyre” for my entire time at Duke. It sometimes felt a little like being in the presence of a mafia boss, or perhaps Ludwig Wittgenstein. You were happy to laugh with him when he found something amusing, but you were terrified in case you would say the wrong thing. He once told me something that may not have been, literally, a joke, but that revealed his particular brand of humor. He said, a propos of lying, that if he ever did lie to me, I should be very grateful, since his only other option would have been to kill me. I remember once daring to engage with him when it came to this kind of humor. He had said, “If I could shoot everyone who called me a communitarian…” To which I replied, “You may not have enough bullets.” He nodded and said that I might be right.

I have mentioned something he said about lying; this is my excuse to say even more about the topic. It is not, I think, as widely acknowledged as it should be that MacIntyre wrote extensively about the ethics of lying. His Tanner Lectures were on the subject (“Truthfulness, Lies, and Moral Philosophers: What Can We Learn from Mill and Kant?” (1994)) and he wrote the entry on lying for the Oxford Companion to Philosophy (ed. Ted Honderich (1995)). He is directly responsible for my own writing on the subject of lying. As a graduate student, I was told by another graduate student that in a seminar MacIntyre had defended the absolute prohibition on lying, which is identified with Kant. I wrote a short piece – hardly an essay – in which I provided examples of justified lies taken from fiction (one example was from Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep), and dropped it in his mailbox. He never replied, and we never talked about it. But sometime later I started to think that Kant might in fact be right about lying being absolutely prohibited. This led to my first conference paper on Kant on lies, while still a graduate student; it became my job talk paper, and eventually, my first article. I like to think that, in this respect if in no other, by writing on the subject of lying I am carrying his mantle.

I will close by saying the most important thing that I can say about him: he was very good to me. In addition to letting me write the dissertation I wanted to write, and letting me stop writing when I thought I had written enough, he performed the most important function that a dissertation supervisor can perform: he got everyone on the committee to agree to a date for the defense. And one thing was for certain — nobody, absolutely nobody, was going to back out of that commitment (they were too scared of him). After the defense (he did not actually ask me any questions; he gave his time to the others), he and Lynn took me out to lunch at a place on Ninth Street, and he even drove me there in his car. He had worn a tie for the occasion, and he told me that he only wore ties to defenses and funerals. His car, I remember, was not fancy, and I am not even certain if it had air conditioning or if it worked particularly well. But he drove us there and of course treated me to the lunch (or they did). That was the kind of man he was. Despite being an eminent academic, he always made time for other people, and he always did everything himself. He once said that he did not trust anyone who did not wash their own dishes. Whatever about my work as a philosopher, I do like to think that he would have been pleased with my work as a dean, helping my faculty and students — being good to them, as he was to me.