Adrian Buck’s Reviews > Whose Justice? - Which Rationality? > Status Update

Macintyre is right to criticise the linguistic philosophy of the 20th century for it's unsophisticated treatment of language. But 'untranslatability' is a scalar measure not an absolute one; it is the ease of translation that is of issue. With enough scholarship, paraphrasing and footnotes, we can get the meaning. As Macintyre himself does in the Greek chapters of this book.

"To be outside of all traditions is to be a stranger to enquiry", this is turning out to be a much more coherent book than After Virtue, problem is though we actually are situated in multiple, often conflicting traditions.

"Human good is heterogeneous because the aims of the self are heterogeneous. Although to subordinate all you aims to one end does not strictly speaking violate the principles of rational choice...it still strikes us as irrational or more likely as mad" pg 337 - what a chapter, went in a liberal Conservative, came out a conservative Liberal.

You gotta love Davey Hume: law based on long possession, government based on consensus. Have to wonder whether MacIntyre is making too much of Hume's commitment to property, afterall, government is funded by taxation, and taxation is a disruption of individual property rights.

it's all gone a bit Marxian, and there seems to an ambiguity over the meaning of 'property'. What Hume seems to be addressing was 'amour-propre' rather than capitalism...not that that makes it any better for English culture :-(

Finding this much easier to read - shorter sentences? The scene is set for for Scottish philosophy (the offspring of Aristotle and Calvin) vs English philosophy (nasty rationalization of greed).

"The effect was to create that very phenomenon, an educated public..." 5th Century Athens? Brilliant exposition on Philosophy in the Scottish Social Order, insights before independence?

A return to form in his 'Background to the Scottish Enlightenment' chapter. The fusion of politics, culture and philosophy we saw in his treatment of the Greeks. Interesting too on the eve of a vote for Scottish Independence.

Finished the section on Aquinas, disappointing when compared to section on Aristotle - simply less scholarship available? Desperately wanted to read more about the Christian conception of 'the Will', the key to one of the important chapters of my own life?

"In fact it is only insofar as we understand what follows from those premises that we understand the premises ourselves."