After Virtue

Any theories can not be divorced from the historical time and space which they depend, so as the Alastair Macintyre's Virtue Ethics. According to the crisis of the modern West society's moral practice and the moral theory, Macintyre elaborated the modern West society's natural climate and the manifestation of the moral life at first, and pointed out that the prevalence of relativism and the arbitrary of Emotionalism are the core crux of the modern West morals' failure. So, how to get rid of this predicament? Macintyre outlined the history prospect of the ancient Greece virtue ethics that take Aristotle as the center, from the initiation, to the development, and then to the desalination, at last lost. And he also proposed that the new reconstruction of the virtue ethics and the ideal moral society possible only by returning back to Aristotle and digging out the spirit of virtue ethics that is ignored by modern social and person for a long time from the history and tradition.However, the history of virtue has already faded and the traditional virtue has fractured for a long time, once on the base of which the bright culture and the life style under the guidance of "national religion"have been severely eroded by modernity. How to return to the history and tradition, and then reconstruct the virtue ethics? Macintyre's reply is clear. Reconstruction of virtue ethics must take community as carrier. But "the basic preference" to publicity of community made Macintyre ignoring the subjectivity of individual in community. And this triggered the conflict between individualism and community chauvinism of ethics. We must turn to the Marxist practical philosophy for help to solve the conflicts and construct the subjectivity with com subjectivity—it both combines individual subjectivity of individualism and to point to publicity of community chauvinism, only by doing this can make individualism and community chauvinism heading for fusing, dialogue. Only in this way, the community with the modernity ethics life characteristic advocated by Macintyre can be generated and the virtue can exhibit its proper mental inherent qualities and the moral honor.