After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory

by Alasdair MacIntyre

Part of the original impulse behind the sophistic view seems to have been the wish to provide a consistent and coherent redefinition of the central evaluative expressions in fifth-century Greek as a basis for educating the young, particularly the aristocratic young, for political success. But the achievement of a certain degree of consistency by elevating competitive conceptions and definitions of the virtues above the cooperative ones turns out to have generated inconsistency at other points. By accepting the evaluative vocabulary of his own particular city the sophist will sometimes find himself using expressions which themselves embody a non-relativistic standpoint inconsistent with the relativism which led him to use that vocabulary. And the sophist who has redefined expressions such as ‘just’, ‘virtue’ and ‘good’ so that they refer to qualities which are conducive to individual success, but who also wishes to employ the conventional vocabulary in order to achieve that success, may well find himself in one situation praising justice, because by ‘justice’ nothing more is to be meant that ‘what is to the interest of the stronger’ and in another praising injustice over justice because it is the practice of injustice (as conventionally understood) which is in fact to the interest of the stronger.