Thread 24729037

>"No, modernity bad! Middle Ages and Ancient world good! You have to be focused on le hecking virtues not what actually makes people happy!"

I get the feeling that these books (you can add "The Culture of Narcissism" and "Theology and Social Theory" too) are only considered "classics" because people feel they have to grant "the other side" some good points. That and people want to build them up so they have something to argue against.

Absolutely no one assigns these for classes though, not even graduate seminars. They aren't drawn on in philosophy except for at reactionary Catholic departments (which are irrelevant) and they simply aren't drawn on at all in the other relevant fields like sociology. It's just like how C.S. Lewis isn't read outside flyover state Christian book groups.

So why the "classic" label? Why the wasting of scarce attention on reactionary polemics? If you dislike liberalism, you're free to move to a trad paradise like Saudi Arabia or Russia.

Even the virtue ethics people (who are a small minority) don't try to resurrect Aristotle and final causes. They know only naturalism makes sense. They try to distance themselves from this stuff.

It's pure /lit/ pseud bait that serious scholars don't read, and this can be seen from open syllabus. You are told about them just so you know how to cite the reactionary ramblings in the right spot.

Deneen's "Why Liberalism Failed" is similarly /lit/ /chud bait that will not doubt become a "classic" decades from now when people try to be magnanimous about how reactionaries aren't actually the pseuds postering as aristocrats and tradlarpers they really are. Nuff said.

MacIntyre wasn't a right-winger, by his own admission.

>>24729037 (OP)
And yes, I am having to read them, but only due to a niche topic I choose with the idea of "know thy enemy," in mind. Rieff is particularly bad for pretending to be a sociologist and then lapsing into aristocratic drivel in purple prose every few pages:
>No! You're letting le plebs drive high culture!
>Irony bad!
>"Literature" (not "books" or "reading") good. TV and film "psychodrama" based on psychology instead of le morality bad!
>Ahhhhh, there is birth control and everyone is having sex. The population is going to collapse!
>Oh no, le too much electronic stimulation.

Note, this book is like 60 years old now so pretty much all its dire predictions have been falsified and yet strangely it seems like it could have been written today.

Lasch is as bad and funny enough the 2018 reprint tried to us "le really it applies to Trump to," to try to save it from its own reactionary elitism, even though chuds love it.

Pic related was blissfully short, but it's literally "the Christian Mark Fisher tier."

>>24729037 (OP)
>trad paradise like... Russia.
It's amazing you managed to solve the captcha.

>>24729037 (OP)
What's your opinion on Charles Taylor OP?

You're genuinely a reddit midwit.

>>24729037 (OP)
virtues makes people happy. Dignity is what makes a person find fulfillment.

Why don’t you try actually reading the books you massive pseud.

>>24729039
fpbp

>>24729039
kek

>>24729037 (OP)
>a trad paradise like Saudi Arabia or Russia
Both of those are heavily urbanized, hypercapitalist consumer economy societies. Russia has higher economy digitization and Internet use than any EU country. The royal status of SA's ruling family is tied to shareholding in an international petrochemical corporation.

The only thing that makes either of those "trad" us lack of support for teh gays.

Haven't read the books, but they did not pursue virtue in the Middle Ages. Virtue ethics, i.e. aspirational ethical systems focused on the pursuit of personal excellence, did not survive Christianity anywhere in the European or Mediterranean world. Up until Nietzsche, who is mostly a buffoon but is a genuine virtue ethicist in the classical sense, European ethics are dominated instead by considerations of sin and wrongdoing, also clearly visible in the contemporary liberal ethic's focus on rights and transgressions against them.

I’ve been waiting for a good thread about this but it looks like it won’t happen today. Retard OP didn’t reproduce a single argument from the book and used the phrase “le bad.” Bummer.

>>24729037 (OP)
I'm hesitant to give your post any attention, since it lacks any argument or real engagement with the opposing point of view beyond flippant appeals to popularity and ad hominems.

As other people have said in the thread so far: reading the fucking books, you midwit reddit dipshit.

Two small points though: first, the restoration of classical Realism has been going on academically since at least 50's once it started to become obvious Positivism was bankrupt. Everything is back on the table now that critique has devastated the modernist project. This is also part of the problem; truly everything is back on the table.

Secondly, people are increasingly abandoning naturalism at all levels of discourse, so you can cope harder.

>>24729037 (OP)
> You have to be focused on le hecking virtues not what actually makes people happy!
When these books are talking about the “therapeutic” they’re not talking about a scientific investigation of how to be happy. They’re talking about a worldview and code of language that attributes problems to external causes that must be healed from.

>>24729037 (OP)
After Virtue is read in every practically every graduate level course on ethics. I read it in undergrad at a very left-wing school.

>>24729048
pretty much the only people who care about him are rw

>>24729037 (OP)
Sorry, but Plato and Aristotle were right thousands of years ago. All deviations from them was stupid, and has resulted in catastrophe as the west attempts elaborate mental gymnastics to cope with it, with the most elaborate being christian theology in general and especially nominalism and its modern offspring especially. We should be 100% be resurrecting Aristotle and final causes, modern obsession with material and efficient causes has led to disenchantment, environmental degradation, and totalitarian power politics that attempt to supplant God with history ending ideology.

>>24730106
based straussian

>>24729037 (OP)
After Virtue is frequently assigned in philosophy classes. I had two different professors assign it. Very deserving of its reputation. Also MacIntyre and Lasch aren't really right wing. It's always you Wiki scholars who don't read anything making threads like this.

>>24729037 (OP)
>If you dislike liberalism, you're free to move to a trad paradise like Saudi Arabia or Russia.
No, you and modernity are the ones who suck. Why should others move? You should change your ways for your own good, retard. Its been well established that your entire paradigm has a demon at its core.

>>24729049
>Author predicts all the major problems society will have half a century from now with fairly good accuracy.
>"Noooo! It isn't prescient because civilization didn't collapse, even though the author never said civilization would collapse, just that it would get extremely shitty."
hmmmm

>>24729037 (OP)
>thinks he knows what makes people happy
lmao

>>24729037 (OP)
I think you're arguing with yourself a bit there, buddy.

>>24731134
No, but liberalism doesn't require that we know this, just that we empower people. Neoliberalism is actually the greatest blessing for the world.

>>24730106
It is true that intellectuals are happy to carve out room within a categorical niche to make room for themselves in a world where there's an unreadable amount of thinkers in any given space. However, every little past detail being meticulously catalogued doesn't mean everything is on the table. Let's not forget also, there's an insanely disingenuous strain of pseudointellectuals, who operate the logic of empire by encorporating every little nigger tribe's unique animistic """"epistemology"""" as "valid". You have to be profoundly retarded or openly ignorant of the history of thought to believe that there's much on the table at all -----which is a very similar problem, in that people are WILLING to look anywhere because of the big lack of definition. However, virtue-sucking-off obscure abbo religion, or doing Neo-neo-neo-neo platonism is rightfully unbelievable. We do have a few better-than-most answers currently though, pic related.

>>24732683
Yes and no. We are in opposed camps here; I find Deleuze et al to be the deeply unserious ones. Postmodernism is useful in critique, but unsuitable as a solution. What has been clearly revealed is the many mistakes we have made. The best thing to do when you realize you have made a wrong turn is to retrace your steps.

But in another sense, we agree. You are correct that there is a distinction between what we can responsibility adopt normatively, and what is actually available. And what is actually available includes much insane, trite, pseudo-intellectual bullshit. As well as defunct ignorance. Perhaps this serves the current needs of institutional power, capital and the attention economy. Dark days.

>>24729037 (OP)
>Absolutely no one assigns these for classes though, not even graduate seminars.
Mate, I literally did a masters course last year that was dedicated to the works of Alasdair MacIntyre

>>24729209
Crypto-reactionary crypto-chud. He's smart enough to package his child apologetics in an appealing looking poison pill at least.

>>24729048
"Virtue" as a concept is inherently normative, reactionary, and conservative.

do anglo niggas be forced to read dem trash?
>alasdair who?
>philip who?

>>24733634
The reactionaries are going to simply butcher and kill the communists and that will settle whether their ideas are taught. The entire reason things like Poststructuralism or Decolonialist theory are taught is because the Allies won World War 2. All philosophy is downstream of brute force. Hobbes was one of the few philosophers smart enough to realize this which is why they wanted to chop his head off.

>>24732683
>Neo-neo-neo-neo platonism is rightfully unbelievable
You're deleuzional. Mentally colonized by german prefixes.

>>24734094
>All philosophy is downstream of brute force.
Ah, is that why Socrates chose death over exile, and why Europe chose to crash out for 400 years purely because the Church condemned the philosophy of Aristotle for having been preserved by muslims?

Hobbes was nothing but a nominalist coward.

>>24729037 (OP)
I don’t agree with macyntire because his alternative is too utopian/idealistic. Liberalism cannot be reduced to le effective production and human isolation. Liberalism is a system in which humans are able to be socially mobile, there’s nothing in liberalism that prevents you from being virtuous, you’re not forced to be a capitalist. Liberalism with a welfare state and strong trade unions is probably the most virtuous form of government imo.

>>24734386
You can only hold this extremely naive take because you already presuppose liberal anthropology.

>>24729427
So trad would be, say, rural India?

>>24733634
>"Virtue" as a concept is inherently normative, reactionary, and conservative.
KWAB self own