MacIntyre, Alasdair

"Justice is always justice within some community and according to some shared understanding of the good."

"A tradition is a living conversation across generations about fundamental questions of human flourishing."

"The concept of rationality itself is embedded within a tradition and cannot be understood in isolation from it."

"To be human is to be capable of being narrative beings shaped by the narratives in which we find ourselves."

"Practices require not just technical skill but virtues of character necessary for cooperative human flourishing."

"Modern moral disagreement is rooted in fundamentally different conceptions of human flourishing."

"The external goods a practice promises are always displaced from the internal goods that define it."

"Moral reasoning in contemporary society has become little more than the clash of individual preference and social utility."

"We become ourselves by learning the stories and traditions that constitute our communities."

"The virtues represent the possibility of human excellence and flourishing."

"Traditions provide frameworks within which rationality itself makes sense and becomes possible."

"The internal goods of a practice are those that can only be specified by reference to the practice itself."

"A disembodied, context-free rationality is a fiction that distorts our understanding of human life."

"To discover what I am to do, I must first discover what story I am a part of."

"Virtues are habits and dispositions that enable human beings to achieve their proper purposes."

"Modern capitalism tends to corrupt practices by encouraging the pursuit of external goods at the expense of internal ones."

"The narrative of one's life is not something one writes alone but something that emerges through interactions with others."

"Understanding requires that we become practitioners ourselves and internalize the standards of a practice."

"Moral philosophy divorced from metaphysics is unable to ground its claims about human flourishing."

"The unity of a human life is the unity of a narrative which moves toward some goal."

"Practices are embedded within and dependent upon the goods of the larger communities that sustain them."

"The concept of telos, the proper end or purpose of a thing, is essential to understanding virtue."

"We inherit not just customs but entire forms of life that shape our possibilities."

"Traditions enable us to see the rationality of alternative ways of living."

"The virtues are those qualities of character that enable us to live well in communities."

"Modern culture tends to fragment human experience into disconnected episodes rather than unified narratives."

"To understand a practice is to understand the type of person one becomes through engagement with it."

"Justice requires not just individual virtue but the proper ordering of social institutions."

"We are not autonomous individuals who contract into society, but beings constituted by social relationships from the start."

"The goods internal to an academic practice include the genuine knowledge and understanding it provides."