On Narrative Inquiry Approach Of Maclntyre’s "After Virtue Project"

"What I should do?" and "What kind of life I want to live?" are two conflicting and basic ethical questions in human’s life.The answer to the former provides a universal moral standard and moral knowledge in form,so that it can be explained why people morally ought to do so.However,this systematization and standardization of moral life simplify the complex moral life and moral world into some concepts and principles.The answer to the latter is the regulation of the inner character of human beings,which emphasizes the particularity of the agents in a certain history and culture and explores the role of virtue to good life,but falls into the criticism of relativism.Therefore,the contemporary ethicists always work on the issue about how to avoid the method of natural science which pursues accuracy and repeatability,and make people acquire virtue and overcome the relativistic challenge at the same time.Among them,Alasdair MacIntyre uses narrative inquiry as the approach to his ethics.The narrative inquiry combines the significance of virtue with moral inquiry,and makes systematic moral inquiry from the perspective of locality and particularity,thus provides a new paradigm for ethics,marking a departure from normative ethics brought from without,and instead articulating the ethics from within.The paper consists of six chapters.The first chapter is the introduction.Based on the existing research,this paper focuses on MacIntyre’s "after virtue project",introduces narrative from the perspective of hermeneutics to the research of moral inquiry,and elaborates on the theoretical base,content and significance of narrative inquiry,so that the consistency and intelligibility of his ethics can be demonstrated,and the status of virtue can be restored.The second chapter tracks the historical background of MacIntyre’s "after virtue project",which is based on the criticism of encyclopedia and genealogy.MacIntyre’s "after virtue project" endeavors to avoid the Meta narrative of encyclopedic school that only believes in reason and progress and divorces from cultural particularity on the one hand,and avoid the disruptive narrative of genealogical school that subverts and negates all traditions on the other hand.Such two ways of moral inquiry leads to the endless disagreement of modern morality,and the conflict between rival moral philosophies can’t be eliminated.The third chapter explores theoretical basis of MacIntyre’s narrative inquiry,which is the inheritance and development of Aristotle and Thomas thought.For Aristotle,rationality in stories is the synthesis of two different expression ways of mythos and logos,which constitute a moral schema of interaction between universal rule and special perception.MacIntyre further absorbed the Aquinas’s comprehensive narrative method for Christianity,emphasizing the importance of the dimension of "historicity" and "artistry",which made authority and standard based on tradition.The fourth chapter elaborates on the contents of MacIntyre’s narrative inquiry.There are four logical development stages of MacIntyre’s narrative inquiry,namely narrative intelligibility of human behavior,narrative unity of human life,unity of narration in the pursuit of good,and tradition concept.The experiential presentation of the character of virtue can help people pursue good in the practice of moving towards the ultimate goal.The definition of MacIntyre’s narrative inquiry has four aspects:Firstly,it is a dialogue between personal narrative and communal narrative;secondly,it is a description of how to cultivate and display virtue characters,so that people can improve their moral experience in the narrative and cultivate comprehensive virtue through moral experience;thirdly,it is a form of rationality which reflect on traditions,and the union of logos and Nous;fourthly,narrative inquiry is closely related to the real life experience,and shows the whole situation of human life through continuous close to life.As a consequence,the four features of MacIntyre’s narrative inquiry are proposed,that is historic,contextual,linguistic and dialectical,to show that "he is not essentially,but becomes through his history,a teller of stories that aspire to truth".The fifth chapter deals with the criticism and defense of narrative inquiry.The relativism challenges of MacIntyre’s ethics mainly focus on the following three aspects:a lack of a unified standard of judgment among various moral traditions;a lack of practical guidance for the narrative unity;rejection of truth in narrative tradition.In view of relativism criticism,narrative inquiry overcome the epistemological crisis,develops an identity which permits differences,and achieves a provisional rationality toward truth.At the same time,Narrative inquiry can show the tension between rationality and truth,and develop a concept of truth in hermeneutics,that is,seeking universal truth from a local or particular inquiry tradition.The narrative inquiry is both situational and normative,not only provides general experience and facts to understand and express the current specific circumstances,but also adds meaning,order,cause and effect into the empirical facts,and integrates disorder and contingency into a whole with intrinsic meaning.It can be concluded in the sixth chapter that narrative is the approach of MacIntyre’s ethics and also a phronesis and action theory,which integrate the three dimensions of ethical theory,approach and practice.MacIntyre’s moral theory under the narrative inquiry is a dynamic description of the narrative quest for the truth,which is a justification,modification or refusal of the existing moral theory.In the extreme expansion of scientific rationality and instrumental rationality,narrative inquiry of ethics is worth pondering and exploring for its local and historical dimension and its emphasis on the process of moral truth.Although according to the core content of relativism debate,narrative inquiry may indeed exist some difficulties and limitations,it does not mean to deny virtue ethics in narrative approach,instead,its repair and development are needed.The paper tries to introduce Rawls’"overlapping consensus" into MacIntyre’s "traditional consensus",and put the idea and content of rule ethics into virtue ethics,in the hope that each local moral knowledge and each moral tradition cherishes the desire to universal moral knowledge,and moral consensus depends on whether the local moral knowledge can always maintain a posture of mutual learning,mutual understanding,mutual promotion and mutual prosperity.