Macintyre’s Communitarianism Thought And It’s Inspirations For Moral Education

Alasdair Macintyre is one of the most famous philosophers, and thinkers ofcontemporary western ethics. Facing the western social moral decay, Macintyreadvocated returning the classical social virtue ethics of Aristotle’ s, reconstructingthe traditional social community and saving the moral crisis of western society.During30years of reform and opening, China’ s economy has continuouslydeveloped and comprehensive national strength has gradually increased. But weare also facing the similar moral environment with western society. Under thecondition of market economy, interests become the criterion to guide people’ sbehavior and people are bothered by utilitarianism, meaninglessness and value lost.We are also encountering the same problem that where we go after the economicdevelopment. Whether from the perspective of culture reconstruction or socialreconstruction to reflect the modernization, community rebuilt will become anunavoidable problem in the modernization construction. Macintyre’ scommunitarianism provides a new choice to western society to solute the moral problems. His advocates not only provide the inspiration for our citizen society andcitizen moral construction, but also contribute new ideas to moral education. Basedon the study of Macintyre’ s social and the theoretical background, this articleexpounds the basic connotation of Macintyre’ s communitarianism and putsforward some inspirations of moral education from Macintyre’ scommunitarianism.This article includes three parts. The part one is about the era background andorigin of communitarianism thought of Macintyre. The author thinks that theemergence of extreme individualism caused by the excessive development of theliberalism is the main reason of western social moral crisis. Since twenty century,with Rawls as the representative of the rise of new liberalism plays an importantrole on the liberal development. Liberalism walks more far in the individualisticway. Macintyre’ s communitarianism is not appear abruptly and the idea ofcommunity has long history. Aristotle’ s city-state political theory, Marx’ s theoryabout the relations between people and society and Tnnies’ s community and socialthought have contributed the thought resources to Macintyre’ s communitarianism.The part two is about the moral meaning of Macintyre’ s communitarianism.Macintyre’ s communitarianism include the following three parts: moral is a special not common, moral philosophy is the basis of virtue ethics and communityis the carrier of morality. Virtue ethics is the most important to understandMacintyre’ s communalism; Practice, the integrity of the personal life andtraditional views are the he basic points of virtue ethics. Due to the limitation ofthe time and the theory itself, Macintyre’ s communitarianism still has somelimitations. For example, it’ s easy to fall into moral relativism, idealistic andcritical than constructive.The part three puts forward some inspirations of moral education fromMacintyre’ s communitarianism. Macintyre’ s communitarianism provides thefollowing three suggestions for moral education: focus on the development andutilization of traditional moral education resources, cultivate moral wisdomthrough moral practice and let moral education regress community life.