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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
An 6 page essay that summarizes and analyzes Alasdair MacIntyre’s Dependent Rational Animals, Why Human Beings Need the Virtues, which calls for the development of a "distinctive" set of virtues, which are constructed not only on acknowledgment of humanity’s rational nature, but also on the fact that human beings are part of the animal kingdom and dependent on each other in various ways throughout the life span. This paper discusses MacIntyre’s thesis in details and then offers the reasons why this writer/tutor agrees, but also feels that MacIntyre left out a major area of ethical philosophy that encompasses precisely the virtues that he calls for in his book. Bibliography lists 2 sources.
Page Count:
6 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khmacdep.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
"distinctive" set of virtues, which are constructed not only on acknowledgement of humanitys rational nature, but also on the fact that human beings are part of the animal kingdom and
dependent on each other in various ways throughout the life span (MacIntyre, 1999, p. 5). In supporting this argument, MacIntyre stresses the vulnerability of human beings to disease and accidental
injury, as well as the dependency needs specific to certain periods in life, such as childhood and old age. He shows how these facts of life have been traditionally pushed
aside due to the tendency of both the public and philosophers to define humanity only by its rational faculty. The following discussion will first examine MacIntyres thesis in more detail,
and then offer the reasons why this writer/tutor agrees, but also feels that MacIntyre left out a major area of ethical philosophy that encompasses precisely the virtues that he calls
for in his book. MacIntyres argument MacIntyre introduces his subject with the observation that traditionally philosophy and the discussion of virtue ethics have made "only passing references to human
vulnerability and affliction and to the connections between them and our dependence on others" (MacIntyre, 1999, p. 1). Adam Smith is listed as one of the few philosophers who contemplated
the fact that humanity discounts its relationship to the natural world, but then MacIntyre shows how "even someone as perceptive as Smith, when he does pause to recognize the
perspectives of ill health and old age, finds reason at once to put them on one side" (MacIntyre, 1999, p. 2). In so doing, MacIntyre argues that Smiths handling of
this issue exemplifies the way that this subject has been treated in general. This causes him to ask the question: ...what difference to moral philosophy would it make, if
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