A deontological interpretation of MacIntyre’s teleological theory
Document Type : Articles
Author
Allameh Tabataba'i University
Abstract
Alasdair MacIntyre’s Aristotelianism aims at the good of the agent, and is considered to give priority to the good over the right. Hence, this account of morality is taken as contrary to act-based deontology. In this paper, however, it is argued that MacIntyre’s distinction between the internal and external goods of practices places him close to deontology. This is because the rejected notion of happiness in Kant’s deontology fits MacIntyre’s notion of external goods, which, according to him, should not be our moral concern. If we accept practices as adequate contexts for the definition of some virtues such as justice, the resultant account of morality would approach a deontological one in the sense that the right is independent of its consequences. In this paper, MacIntyre’s Aristotelian distinction between internal and external goods are explained, and it is argued that the internal good of practices is conceptually close to deontological ethics.
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