Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry

This monograph examines three competing frameworks for moral inquiry that emerged from the 19th century: the encyclopedic tradition of the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Nietzschean genealogy, and Thomistic Aristotelianism. MacIntyre argues that these represent fundamentally incompatible approaches to understanding morality, each with distinct implications for how one conceives truth, rationality, and ultimately the divine order.

The encyclopedic tradition, exemplified by late Victorian intellectuals, assumes moral truths are accessible through neutral, progressive inquiry. This approach treats morality as a domain of objective facts discoverable by any rational agent, independent of particular traditions or theological commitments. MacIntyre demonstrates how this project ultimately fails due to its inability to justify its own rational standards without circular reasoning.

Nietzschean genealogy radically opposes the encyclopedic project by exposing all moral claims as masks for power relations. This perspective undermines any foundation for objective moral truth, viewing appeals to rationality or divine order as sophisticated forms of domination. MacIntyre shows how genealogy's corrosive skepticism extends to religious belief, treating theological claims as particularly pernicious forms of self-deception.

Against both alternatives, MacIntyre champions a Thomistic Aristotelian approach that grounds moral inquiry within a tradition-constituted rationality. This framework understands human beings as naturally oriented toward truth through practices embedded in historical communities. Crucially, this approach maintains that genuine moral knowledge requires acknowledgment of humanity's teleological nature - a nature ultimately comprehensible only in relation to divine providence.

MacIntyre's analysis reveals how these three approaches generate incompatible stances toward religious belief. The encyclopedic tradition reduces religion to moral platitudes accessible by reason alone. Genealogy dismisses religious claims as power plays. Thomistic Aristotelianism, however, argues that coherent moral inquiry ultimately requires theological grounding, as human teleology finds its full explanation only in relation to God as final cause.

The work's significance lies in demonstrating that contemporary moral disagreements often stem from fundamentally different frameworks of inquiry. MacIntyre suggests that the Thomistic tradition offers the most coherent account precisely because it acknowledges the necessity of theological commitments for understanding human nature and moral truth. This argument challenges both secular moral philosophy and fideistic approaches to ethics.