“Our intellectual errors are often, although not always, rooted in our moral errors. For both types of mistake the best protections… sarahendren.com/2025/02/1…
@ablerism Humility can be very helpful as well – at least on the intellectual side of things, I find it easier to be accepting of what I do not know or mistakes I’ve made.
@sim0ne Yes indeed — and MacIntyre is big on this: that virtues like humility are actually more important to practical reason than abstract idea-parsing (as though one could parse in isolation anyway!).
@ablerism I saw Myles Werntz recently started a reading group for After Virtue. Do you sense your own intellectual shifts are running parallel with others’? (I am trying not to say “vibe shift,” but there I go.)
Anyway, this quote seems like a good summary of what he talks about (so far as I understand it): the moral life is important, but it’s not really possible outside of a community.
@jordanellishall I’m in that book group! And I suspect this current revisitation of AM — as one way to get to foundationalist moral realism — falls into a regular cyclical attempt to counter the old conundrum of existential relativism and despair. Maybe only felt as urgent during times of acute turmoil? I got here by chasing down a very specific intellectual bottleneck starting several years ago, but it turns out to sorta track along with, yes, a vibe. I’m also reading AM’s Dependent Rational Animals, though, and it’s equally challenging, not least to the vibe’s noxious branches of “moral foundations = political certainty.” As you say, the community part is so key for AM, and it’s really when we take seriously our animality and multiple vulnerabilities that see how much the virtues precede intellectual abstractions… My head is full after Myles’s group last night.
@ablerism Aha, makes sense! I haven’t read MacIntyre in a while, but AV and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry left a big impression on me (speaking as an inveterate normie who can’t pretend to follow half of this stuff). Anyway I was trying to track down where else I’d seen MacIntyre pop up recently-ish and came up with this review in the LRB of a biography published in ’22 and this post by Adam Kotsko, which reminded me a lot of the opening section of AV.
@jordanellishall Adding these to the queue. Thank you! I understand only half too; fellow travelers.