During my “parking lot duty” this morning I read through a few pages of After Virtue. I was looking for the passage wherein MacIntyre defines a “practice” and its role in a tradition. Instead I found this passage, which, again, seems apt:
What then sustains and strengthens traditions? What weakens and destroys them? The answer in key part is: the exercise or the lack of exercise of the relevant virtues. The virtues find their point and purpose not only in sustaining those relationships necessary if the variety of goods internal to practices are to be achieved and not only in sustaining the form of an individual life in which that individual may seek out his or her good as the good of his or her own life, but also in sustaining those traditions which provide both practices and individual lives with their necessary historical context. Lack of justice, lack of truthfulness, lack of courage, lack of the relevant intellectual virtues — these corrupt traditions, just as they do those institutions and practices which derive their life from the traditions of which they are the contemporary embodiments.
Justice, truthfulness, courage, and intellect. These are the four virtues that can make or break a traditioned community. It makes one wonder what sort of predicament we’ve gotten ourselves into.
