Ugh, I realize there is a huge problem with the vocabulary and vibe of MacIntyrean “virtue ethics”, it just sounds so... virtuous, like the ultimate form of virtue signaling.
I can imagine a lot of people feeling disgusted, annoyed, or excluded by the jargon of meaning, tradition, morality, community, etc ad nauseum. But I think his view is interesting and valuable in a more abstract sense that doesn't need to imply any specific cultural conservatism.
MacIntyre himself starts "After Virtue" with pointing out how in our contemporary situation, the language of ethics has already been severed from reality, hence the "shrill tone and interminable nature" of ethical debates.
I think viewing a person MacIntyreanly has to start with looking at the context the person is ALREADY in, which roles and stories are ALREADY alive for that person—it's not about comparing people to some conservative petite bourgeois ideals or anything like that.
And if it turns out to be the case, as MacIntyre argues, that there was something noble about ancient Athens, or a real coherence to medieval Aristotelianism, then we can't just LARP that in some lame way, we need to look at it more ESSENTIALLY to learn from it.
It's also important that MacIntyre never makes the kind of conservative claim that being embedded in a context implies that you need to respect and maintain that context, in fact he states that "rebellion against my identity is always one possible mode of expressing it."
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“It is increasingly recognized that humans must be understood as embodied: a theme first argued by Edmund Husserl and deepened by Maurice Merleau-Ponty.”
isn’t it very interesting that we can so easily pinpoint the time in human history, in the early 20th century, when philosophical thinkers discovered that HUMANS HAVE BODIES
like it does not seem like a big stretch to say that the history of philosophy is the history of a massive trippy hallucination
trying to write down goals in the form of vividly appealing images that are both aspirational and attainable in such a way that bringing them to mind puts my body in a state of engaged activity with intrinsic motivation and a sense of knowing the direction and having a good grip
while preparing for the @CompliceGoals goal-crafting initiative I am really coming to understand more what a GOAL is and how those things are supposed to function in life
they haven't really been a big EXPLICIT part of my life ever
in my typical overintellectualizing way I will refer to David Abram's invocation of Merleau-Ponty's identification of the temporal future with the HORIZON
it seems that a GOAL needs to be something that you can "see" on the "horizon" even if not literally as a nomadic traveller
Merleau-Ponty is all about the "intentionality of the body" as it moves and grasps and strives for an "optimal grip" on a situation and so on
being in a landscape, finding one's way, navigating by landmarks and stars and a felt sense of something salient & important over yonder