Three rival versions of moral enquiry – Alasdair MacIntyre

An Examination of Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition as Competing Frameworks for Moral Understanding

The Three Rival Versions

We are at the opening of the work, where MacIntyre announces the central problem that the entire book will address: the existence of three fundamentally incompatible modes of moral enquiry, each with its own history, standards, and conception of rationality.

The book begins by identifying what MacIntyre calls three rival versions of moral enquiry. These are not merely different ethical theories but entire ways of understanding what it means to engage in moral reasoning, what counts as a valid argument, and how truth is to be discovered. The first is the Encyclopaedia tradition, exemplified by the ninth edition of the *Encyclopaedia Britannica*, which assumes that moral enquiry progresses through the accumulation of objective, universal knowledge. The second is Genealogy, represented by Nietzsche and his successor Michel Foucault, which treats moral enquiry as an expression of power relations and a mask for underlying will-to-power. The third is Tradition, which MacIntyre himself champions, drawing on Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas and understanding moral enquiry as embedded within particular historical communities and practices.

“Each of these three positions presents itself as a programme for carrying through the tasks of a genuinely rational enquiry, and each denies to the other two the status of a genuinely rational enquiry.”

MacIntyre introduces these three versions not abstractly but through the concrete history of the 1912 Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh, where a conflict erupted between two lecturers: the Encyclopaedist Sir James Frazer and the Traditionalist Father Andrew Lang. Frazer, author of *The Golden Bough*, represented the view that Christian and other religious beliefs were primitive survivals to be superseded by scientific rationality. Lang, a Catholic priest and scholar, argued that the Christian tradition contained resources of rational enquiry that Frazer’s approach could not acknowledge. This confrontation, MacIntyre suggests, foreshadows deeper conflicts that persist into the present, and it reveals that what is at stake is not merely disagreement about conclusions but disagreement about what rationality itself is.

The point of setting up these three versions is to show that we cannot simply adjudicate between them by appealing to some neutral standard of rationality, because each version defines rationality differently. MacIntyre’s task throughout the work will be to enter into the debates among these rivals, to show their strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately to argue that the Tradition version, as developed through Aquinas, provides the most adequate account of rational enquiry.

The Encyclopaedia: A Project of Systematic Rationality

We now turn to MacIntyre’s detailed examination of the first rival, the Encyclopaedia tradition, which he presents through an analysis of the ninth edition of the *Encyclopaedia Britannica* and its conception of knowledge.

The Encyclopaedia represents the project of the Enlightenment, which MacIntyre characterizes as an attempt to establish a unified, systematic body of knowledge that is accessible to any rational person regardless of their historical or cultural situation. The ninth edition of the *Encyclopaedia Britannica*, published between 1875 and 1889, exemplifies this project at its most confident. Its editors and contributors assumed that knowledge progresses through the accumulation of facts, that scientific method provides the paradigm for all genuine enquiry, and that earlier forms of thought—including religious belief and philosophical speculation—can be judged and found wanting by the standards of modern science.

MacIntyre examines the entry on “Theism” written by Robert Flint, a Scottish theologian, as a case study. Flint’s entry attempts to present theism as a rational position that can be defended against both atheism and agnosticism using the same standards of evidence and argument that any reasonable person would accept. But MacIntyre points out that Flint’s actual argument depends on a series of assumptions about the nature of evidence and about what constitutes a satisfactory explanation that are themselves contestable. Flint assumes, for example, that the universe requires an explanation in terms of a creator, and that the existence of order and design points to an intelligent designer. But these assumptions are not shared by all rational persons; they belong to a particular tradition of theological reflection.

“The encyclopaedist’s claim to have provided a neutral, impersonal, and universally valid standard of rational judgment was therefore in fact a claim to have provided a standard which was in fact that of a particular and local tradition, that of the Enlightenment, but disguised so as to appear universal.”

The deeper problem, MacIntyre argues, is that the Encyclopaedia project cannot acknowledge its own historical particularity. It presents itself as the voice of reason itself, speaking from nowhere in particular and to everyone everywhere. But this self-presentation is an illusion. The standards of rationality that the Encyclopaedia appeals to—the primacy of empirical evidence, the ideal of systematic unity, the rejection of authority—are themselves the products of a specific historical development, namely the Enlightenment’s break with earlier traditions of enquiry. The Encyclopaedist cannot see that he stands within a tradition because he has been taught to see all traditions as obstacles to reason rather than as vehicles for it.

This critique establishes a key move in MacIntyre’s overall argument. The Encyclopaedia fails not because it is wrong about particular facts, but because it misunderstands the nature of rationality itself. It mistakes its own local, historical standards for universal, timeless ones, and it thereby forecloses the possibility of understanding other traditions of enquiry on their own terms.

The Genealogy: A Suspicious Counter-Project

We now move to MacIntyre’s examination of the second rival, Genealogy, which he presents as a reaction against the Encyclopaedia’s pretensions, but one that ultimately suffers from its own fatal flaws.

Genealogy, as developed by Nietzsche in works such as *The Genealogy of Morals* and *Beyond Good and Evil*, and later refined by Foucault, begins by exposing the Encyclopaedia’s claim to neutrality and universality as a sham. The Genealogist argues that what the Encyclopaedist presents as disinterested reason is in fact a mask for the will-to-power of a particular social group. The Encyclopaedia’s standards of rationality are not universal truths but weapons in a struggle for dominance. The Genealogist’s task, therefore, is to unmask these pretensions, to show how the concepts of truth, reason, and morality have been shaped by the interests of those who wield them.

MacIntyre traces the Genealogical method back to Nietzsche’s famous claim that “there are no facts, only interpretations.” This is not merely an epistemological position but a strategic one: the Genealogist aims to subvert all claims to objective truth by showing their contingent, interested origins. Where the Encyclopaedist sees progress in the accumulation of knowledge, the Genealogist sees the consolidation of power. Where the Encyclopaedist sees rational consensus, the Genealogist sees the victory of one faction over another.

“The genealogist, by contrast, treats the standards of the encyclopaedia as themselves an expression of a particular standpoint in the struggle for power, and he or she invites us to view the whole project of the encyclopaedia as one more episode in the history of the will to power.”

MacIntyre identifies a central problem with the Genealogical project, however. If the Genealogist’s own claims are also expressions of the will-to-power, then they too are subject to unmasking. The Genealogist cannot consistently claim that his or her own position is true, because the very concept of truth has been undermined. This leads to what MacIntyre calls the self-refuting character of genealogy. The Genealogist must claim to be telling the truth about the will-to-power while simultaneously denying that truth is possible. Nietzsche himself was aware of this problem, MacIntyre notes, and his response was to abandon the claim to truth and instead to offer his genealogy as a “perspective” that is more useful or life-enhancing than its rivals. But this response, MacIntyre argues, cannot satisfy the demands of rational enquiry, because it reduces all arguments to expressions of preference.

The Genealogist’s strategy of unmasking thus proves self-defeating. It can expose the pretensions of others, but it cannot provide a positive foundation for moral enquiry. It can criticize, but it cannot construct. And in its most extreme forms, as in the work of Foucault, it threatens to dissolve the very possibility of rational discourse altogether, leaving only an endless play of power relations.

The Tradition: A Return to Aristotle and Aquinas

We now turn to MacIntyre’s presentation of the third rival, the Tradition version of moral enquiry, which he introduces through a rediscovery of Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy.

MacIntyre argues that the Tradition version offers a way beyond the impasse between Encyclopaedia and Genealogy. The Tradition understands rational enquiry as embedded within a particular historical community that cultivates practices of reasoning over time. This is not a retreat into irrationalism or relativism, MacIntyre insists, but a recognition that all reasoning takes place within some tradition, and that traditions can be more or less rational depending on how they handle internal conflicts and encounters with rival traditions.

The key figures for MacIntyre are Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Aristotle, in the *Nicomachean Ethics* and *Metaphysics*, presents a conception of rational enquiry that is always situated within a particular polis—a political community with its own practices, institutions, and standards of excellence. For Aristotle, the good life for human beings cannot be specified in abstraction from the concrete forms of life in which human beings actually flourish. Practical reasoning, or phronesis, is not a matter of applying universal rules but of discerning what is appropriate in particular circumstances, guided by the virtues that one has acquired through habituation.

Thomas Aquinas develops Aristotle’s insights within the context of Christian revelation. For Aquinas, rational enquiry involves the integration of faith and reason—not the subordination of one to the other, but their mutual enrichment. The truths of revelation do not contradict reason but extend it, providing a fuller understanding of the human good than reason alone can achieve. Aquinas’s *Summa Theologica* exemplifies this method: it proceeds by posing questions, examining objections, and arriving at conclusions through a process of dialectical reasoning that draws on Scripture, the Church Fathers, Aristotle, and philosophical argument.

“A tradition of enquiry is an argument extended through time in which certain fundamental agreements are defined and redefined in terms of two kinds of conflict: those with critics and enemies external to the tradition who reject all or at least key parts of those fundamental agreements, and those internal, interpretative debates through which the meaning and rationale of the fundamental agreements come to be expressed and by whose progress a tradition is constituted.”

MacIntyre emphasizes that a tradition of enquiry is not a static set of beliefs handed down unchanged. It is a living argument, a process of development and refinement. Members of a tradition disagree with each other about how best to interpret their shared commitments, and these internal debates are essential to the tradition’s vitality. A tradition that cannot engage with internal criticism and external challenges becomes stale and dogmatic, while one that navigates such challenges successfully becomes more rational and more adequate to reality.

The Tradition version thus avoids the Enlightenment’s illusion of neutrality, because it acknowledges its own historically conditioned character. And it avoids the Genealogist’s descent into nihilism, because it insists that truth is achievable—not as an absolute, timeless possession, but as the outcome of faithful enquiry within a community that is committed to getting things right.

Encyclopaedia Versus Genealogy: The Modern Impasse

We now come to MacIntyre’s analysis of the debate between the Encyclopaedia and Genealogy, which he presents as having reached a deadlock that neither side can resolve using its own resources.

MacIntyre reconstructs a hypothetical debate between an Encyclopaedist and a Genealogist. The Encyclopaedist begins by claiming that the methods of modern science and scholarship provide a neutral, objective standard by which all claims can be judged. The Genealogist responds by pointing out that this very claim to neutrality is itself a rhetorical strategy designed to exclude alternative perspectives. The Encyclopaedist replies that the Genealogist’s position is self-refuting because it denies the possibility of truth while claiming to have uncovered the truth about the operation of power. The Genealogist retorts that the Encyclopaedist’s notion of truth is an illusion, and that the only consistency required is to treat all claims as expressions of interest.

“Each party to this dispute has a systematically different conception of what a rational resolution to their disagreements would look like. And each, on its own terms, can give a plausible account of the defects of the other.”

The problem, MacIntyre argues, is that each side can explain the other’s position as a product of something other than rational enquiry. The Encyclopaedist can dismiss the Genealogist as a nihilist who has abandoned reason out of a perverse desire to subvert authority. The Genealogist can dismiss the Encyclopaedist as a dupe who is unaware of the power structures that underlie his own supposedly neutral standards. Neither can offer a refutation that the other side would recognize as valid, because they do not share enough common ground for genuine argument to take place.

This impasse is characteristic of what MacIntyre calls the post-Enlightenment condition. Modern moral philosophy, from Hume and Kant through to the utilitarians and their critics, has attempted to find a foundation for morality that is independent of any particular tradition. But these attempts have all failed, MacIntyre argues, precisely because they cannot establish their own claims to universality. The result is a fragmented culture in which moral arguments cannot be resolved because the disputants do not share a common framework for reasoning. The Encyclopaedia and Genealogy represent two poles of this fragmentation: the Enlightenment’s failed hope for universal reason, and the postmodern rejection of reason altogether.

The Tradition: Conflicting Interpretations of Aristotle

We are now in the central historical section of the work, where MacIntyre examines how the Thomistic tradition he advocates actually developed, focusing on the crucial conflicts over how to read Aristotle that emerged in the thirteenth century. This section establishes that tradition is not a monolithic inheritance but a living argument about its own foundational texts.

MacIntyre begins by noting that the recovery of Aristotle’s texts in the Latin West did not produce a single, unified Aristotelianism but rather a series of competing interpretations, each shaped by the particular intellectual and institutional context of its proponents. The key figures are the Latin Averroists, particularly Siger of Brabant, who read Aristotle through the commentaries of Averroes; the Augustinian theologians, such as Bonaventure, who were deeply suspicious of Aristotle’s pagan philosophy; and Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, who sought to synthesize Aristotle with Christian revelation. The central dispute concerns the relationship between philosophy and theology, reason and faith. The Averroists, following Averroes, argued for the “double truth” doctrine: what is true in philosophy may be false in theology, and vice versa. This position, MacIntyre shows, effectively separates philosophy from any allegiance to revealed truth, making it a self-sufficient discipline that need not conform to the teachings of the Church. The Augustinians, by contrast, insisted that all truth is one, because it comes from God, and therefore philosophy must serve theology. But their position, MacIntyre argues, was hampered by their reliance on Plato and Augustine rather than Aristotle, leaving them without adequate conceptual resources for understanding the natural world and human agency. Thomas Aquinas navigates between these extremes.

“Aquinas, by contrast, understood that the intellectual virtues are not merely means to the end of theological inquiry, but have their own intrinsic integrity and yet are perfected by and subordinated to the theological virtues.”

This passage captures Aquinas’s distinctive solution: he affirms the autonomy of philosophy as a rational discipline while also insisting on its subordination to theology. The intellectual virtues, such as understanding, science, and wisdom, have their own proper objects and methods, and they can achieve genuine knowledge of the natural order. But they are not the highest virtues; they are perfected by the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, which are infused by grace and oriented toward the supernatural end of human life. This allows Aquinas to accept Aristotle’s natural philosophy and ethics while also transforming them through the lens of Christian revelation. He does not, like the Averroists, separate the two realms, nor does he, like the Augustinians, collapse philosophy into theology. Instead, he integrates them in a hierarchical but non‑conflictual relationship.

What this means within the work is that MacIntyre is providing a concrete historical example of how a living tradition develops through conflict and resolution. The clash between the Averroist, Augustinian, and Thomistic readings of Aristotle is not a sign of the tradition’s weakness but of its vitality. Each position articulates a genuine problem, and the eventual triumph of the Thomistic synthesis comes not from suppressing dissent but from demonstrating that it can resolve the difficulties that the other positions cannot. This also reinforces MacIntyre’s broader argument that rationality is always tradition‑constituted: the debate over Aristotle’s meaning could only be conducted within the terms set by the authoritative texts and institutions of the medieval university. There is no neutral, ahistorical standpoint from which to adjudicate the dispute; the only way forward is to engage the arguments from within the tradition and to show that one interpretation is more coherent and comprehensive than its rivals.

The Genealogist’s Challenge: Overcoming Morality

We now shift to the Genealogical tradition’s own historical narrative, as MacIntyre examines how Nietzsche and his successors understand the relationship between morality and power. This section presents the Genealogical critique of morality not as an external attack but as an internal account of how moral concepts were formed and what functions they serve.

MacIntyre argues that the Genealogist’s project, most fully articulated by Friedrich Nietzsche, is to unmask morality as a system of power relations disguised as universal truths. The Genealogist does not ask whether moral claims are true or false; rather, he asks how they came to be accepted, what social functions they serve, and what psychological needs they satisfy. The answer, in Nietzsche’s account, is that morality — especially the morality of good and evil that emerged from Judaism and Christianity — is the product of ressentiment, the vengeful hatred of the weak for the strong. The weak, unable to assert their will to power directly, invent a moral system that condemns the strong as “evil” and celebrates their own weakness as “good.” This “slave morality” then becomes internalized as conscience, turning the will to power against itself and producing the guilt‑ridden, self‑tormented modern subject.

“Genealogy therefore does not and cannot provide an independent standard by which to judge between rival moral claims, since to judge is already to employ the very standards whose authority the genealogist is calling into question.”

This passage highlights the radicalism of the Genealogical challenge. The Genealogist does not offer a competing moral system but rather denies that any such system can be rationally justified. Every moral claim is a move in a game of power, and the only question is which moves are effective in a given context. This puts the Genealogist in a paradoxical position: how can he assert the truth of his own account without falling into the very universalism he attacks? Nietzsche, MacIntyre notes, sometimes seems to claim that his own perspective is more honest or more insightful, but any such claim would require a standard of truth that his own method undercuts. Later Genealogists, such as Michel Foucault, avoid this problem by refusing to make any universal claims at all, instead offering local, contingent analyses of specific practices.

What this means within the work is that the Genealogical challenge is both powerful and self‑defeating. It exposes the hidden power dynamics that underlie moral claims, and it shows that the Enlightenment’s dream of a universal, tradition‑independent morality is a fantasy. But it cannot itself provide a basis for moral life, because it cannot justify any alternative. The Genealogist can only criticize; he cannot build. This is why MacIntyre sees the Genealogical tradition as leading to a dead end: it undermines all authority, including its own, and leaves nothing in its place. The result is a culture of suspicion and fragmentation, where every claim is reduced to an expression of power and no one can give reasons for action that others are bound to respect. This sets the stage for MacIntyre’s argument that the Thomistic tradition, by contrast, can both recognize the partial truth of the Genealogical critique and offer a constructive alternative.

The Encyclopaedia’s Failure: The Fragmentation of Morality

We now examine the Encyclopaedist project in more detail, focusing on its inability to achieve the universality it claimed. This section shows how the Encyclopaedic tradition’s own internal development led to the very fragmentation it sought to overcome.

MacIntyre argues that the Encyclopaedic project, as exemplified by the Scottish Enlightenment philosophers such as David Hume and Adam Smith, attempted to ground morality in human nature and universal sentiments. Hume, for instance, located the foundation of morality in the moral sense, a natural sentiment of approval and disapproval that all human beings share. Smith developed this into a theory of sympathy, the capacity to enter into the feelings of others. These philosophers believed that by appealing to common human nature, they could establish a morality that transcended the particularities of tradition, religion, and culture. However, MacIntyre shows that this project failed because the concept of “human nature” they employed was itself a product of their own tradition and could not bear the universal weight they placed on it. The moral sense theory presupposes a specific conception of the self and of human flourishing that is not shared by all rational beings. Moreover, the attempt to derive moral principles from empirical observation of human psychology runs into the is‑ought problem famously identified by Hume himself: one cannot logically deduce what ought to be from what is the case.

“The Encyclopaedists had, in their own terms, no adequate answer to the question: why should I be moral? For the answer to that question can only be given from within some particular tradition of moral enquiry.”

This passage captures the fundamental weakness of the Encyclopaedic project. The question “Why be moral?” presupposes that there is some standpoint outside morality from which its authority can be justified. But the Encyclopaedists, having rejected tradition, have no such standpoint. They can appeal to self‑interest, to social harmony, to the approval of others, but none of these provides a compelling reason for someone who does not already share the moral commitments they are trying to ground. The result is that the Encyclopaedic tradition, despite its ambitions, produces a fragmented moral landscape in which individuals are left to choose their own values without rational guidance. The modern moral philosophy that emerges from this tradition — utilitarianism, Kantianism, intuitionism — is a series of attempts to repair the damage, but each fails because it cannot escape the foundational problems MacIntyre has identified.

What this means within the work is that the Encyclopaedic tradition, despite its historical dominance, has no secure intellectual foundation. Its claim to universality is exposed as an illusion, and its failure leaves a vacuum that the Genealogical tradition rushes to fill. But the Genealogical tradition, as we have seen, cannot fill it either; it can only destroy. This is the impasse of modern moral culture: two rival traditions, each with powerful critiques of the other, but neither able to provide a coherent basis for moral life. MacIntyre is not yet offering his solution; he is clearing the ground by showing that the dominant traditions of modernity have reached a dead end. The reader is now prepared to consider whether a third tradition, rooted in Aristotle and Aquinas, might succeed where the others have failed.

Tradition Versus the Encyclopaedia: The Problem of Incommensurability

We are now at the point in the work where MacIntyre directly pits the Tradition against the Encyclopaedia, examining their fundamental incompatibility and the impossibility of any neutral adjudication between them. This section develops the core claim that these are genuinely rival traditions with incommensurable standards of rationality.

MacIntyre begins by asking a seemingly simple question: how could a proponent of the Tradition and a proponent of the Encyclopaedia possibly resolve their disagreements? The answer, he argues, is that they cannot — not because either side is irrational, but because they operate with fundamentally different conceptions of rational justification itself. For the Encyclopaedia, rational justification proceeds from first principles that are universally available to any rational person, independent of any particular historical or cultural context. These principles are self-evident or derived from undeniable facts about human nature and the world. The Encyclopaedist assumes that any rational person, properly educated and free from prejudice, will recognize these principles and the conclusions that follow from them. For the Tradition, by contrast, rational justification is always internal to a particular tradition of enquiry. There are no first principles available to reason as such; there are only the principles that emerge from and are tested within a specific historical community of enquiry. The rationality of the Tradition is not that of a single, universal method but that of a ongoing dialectical process in which the tradition’s own standards are refined and corrected through internal debate and external challenge.

The practical implications of this disagreement are spelled out through a concrete example. MacIntyre imagines a confrontation between two moral philosophers: one from the Encyclopaedic tradition, say a follower of Kant or Sidgwick, and one from the Thomistic Aristotelian tradition. The Encyclopaedist presents what she takes to be a self-evident moral principle, perhaps the principle of utility or the categorical imperative. She assumes that this principle is binding on all rational agents as such. The Thomist, however, does not recognize the authority of this principle. He does not see why he should accept it as a starting point for moral reasoning. He has his own first principles, derived from the Aristotelian understanding of human nature and the natural law, and these principles lead him to different conclusions. The Encyclopaedist then tries to show that the Thomist’s principles are false or incoherent by appealing to standards of evidence and argument that she takes to be universal. But the Thomist replies that these standards are themselves part of the Encyclopaedic tradition, not neutral criteria available to all. He has his own standards of evidence and argument, standards that have been refined over centuries of Thomistic enquiry. Neither side can convince the other because there is no neutral ground — no set of premises or criteria of reasoning that both parties accept as authoritative.

“What is at issue between the encyclopaedist and the traditionist is not, and cannot be, a matter of rational arguments by themselves, because what constitutes a good reason is itself in dispute.”

This passage crystallizes the fundamental difficulty. MacIntyre is not saying that one side is right and the other wrong; he is saying that the disagreement goes all the way down, to the very criteria of what counts as a good argument. The Encyclopaedist assumes that rationality is a single, timeless method; the traditionist assumes that rationality is always historically and socially embodied. These are not just different conclusions about morality; they are different conceptions of rationality itself. And because they are, there is no way to resolve the disagreement by appealing to a higher authority — because any such appeal would already presuppose one or the other conception of rationality. This is what MacIntyre calls the problem of incommensurability: rival traditions can be genuinely incommensurable, meaning that their standards of reasoning are so different that they cannot be translated into each other’s terms without loss or distortion. Incommensurability does not mean that communication is impossible; it means that rational argument across traditions is radically more difficult than the Encyclopaedic tradition supposes.

What this means for the overall argument is that MacIntyre is rejecting the central assumption of the Enlightenment — that there is a single, universal rationality that all reasonable people share. The Encyclopaedia’s project of a systematic moral science is not just flawed in its details; it is flawed in its very conception of what rationality is. The Tradition, by contrast, does not claim to have access to universal reason; it claims to have a superior account of how rational enquiry actually proceeds — through the dialectical development of traditions over time. But this claim cannot be proven from a neutral standpoint; it can only be shown by demonstrating that the Tradition is better able to understand its rivals than they understand themselves, and better able to explain why the project of a universal rationality has failed. The reader is now prepared to see that the contest between traditions is not a matter of abstract argument but of historical and practical demonstration.

The Genealogy Versus the Tradition: The Attack on Teleology

We now turn to the confrontation between the Genealogical tradition and the Aristotelian-Thomistic Tradition, a confrontation that centers on the concept of teleology — the idea that human beings have a final end or purpose that defines human flourishing. This section develops the Genealogical critique of teleology and the Tradition’s response, showing how each tradition understands the other’s core commitments.

MacIntyre presents the Genealogical critique of the Tradition through the figure of Nietzsche, who is the most powerful and systematic exponent of the genealogical stance toward moral enquiry. For Nietzsche, as for the Genealogical tradition generally, the Aristotelian concept of a human telos is the central illusion that the genealogist must expose. The Tradition claims that human beings have a given nature, a nature that includes a specific end or purpose, and that moral reasoning consists in discovering what this end is and how to achieve it. But the Genealogist sees this as a projection: the idea of a human telos is not discovered but invented, not a fact about human nature but a construction of human power disguised as a description of reality. The Aristotelian tradition, in Nietzsche’s view, is a particularly sophisticated form of the slave morality that he diagnoses in *On the Genealogy of Morals*. It is the attempt of the weak to impose their values on the strong by claiming that those values are inscribed in the nature of things. The concept of a final end is a weapon in this struggle: it allows the Aristotelian to say that certain ways of life are objectively better than others, that some desires are natural and others perverted, that some characters are virtuous and others vicious. But these judgments, the Genealogist argues, are not objective truths; they are expressions of a particular will to power, the will of those who seek to control others by moralizing their own preferences.

The Genealogist’s attack on teleology is not merely a denial that human beings have a purpose; it is a positive account of why the concept of purpose arises in the first place. MacIntyre explains that the Genealogist traces the concept of a human telos back to the psychological and social conditions of its emergence. The idea of a final end, the Genealogist argues, arises from the experience of resentment (*ressentiment*). Those who are unable to achieve their desires, who are weak or oppressed, project their frustration onto the world by claiming that their desires are not merely frustrated but *unnatural* or *perverted*. The strong, by contrast, do not need to justify their desires; they simply act on them. The concept of a human telos is thus a tool of the weak, a way of delegitimizing the desires of the strong by claiming that those desires violate the natural order. This is why Nietzsche’s critique of morality is inseparable from his critique of Christianity: the Christian concept of a natural law that governs human conduct is, for Nietzsche, the most elaborate and successful form of the slave morality’s revenge against the strong. The Tradition, with its Aristotelian roots and its Christian development, is therefore the prime target of Genealogical suspicion.

“The genealogist’s claim is that the concept of a human telos, of a final end for human beings, is not a discovery but an invention, and that it is an invention whose function is to disguise the operations of the will to power.”

This quotation captures the heart of the Genealogical critique. The Tradition claims to be describing the objective structure of human nature; the Genealogist claims that this description is actually a normative construction, a way of shaping human beings to fit a particular social order. The Tradition’s claim to objectivity is, from the Genealogical perspective, the most dangerous form of deception because it presents a local and contingent set of values as universal and necessary truths. The Genealogist’s task is to unmask this deception, to show that the Tradition’s claims to truth are actually claims to power.

MacIntyre here is presenting the clash at its sharpest. The Tradition and the Genealogy cannot be reconciled: one claims that there is an objective human nature with a discoverable purpose; the other claims that the very idea of such a purpose is an illusion invented to serve the interests of the weak. The Genealogist sees the Tradition as a form of false consciousness; the Tradition sees the Genealogist as a destroyer of the very possibility of moral order. The reader is now prepared to see that neither tradition can simply absorb the other; they are genuine rivals that require a choice. But MacIntyre is not yet making that choice; he is presenting the terms of the conflict so that the reader can understand what is at stake.

The Encyclopaedia Versus the Genealogy: The Battle Over Rationality

We now arrive at the third major confrontation, between the Encyclopaedia and the Genealogy. This section explores how these two traditions, despite their radical differences, actually mirror each other in crucial respects, and how their conflict reveals the deepest problems of modern moral culture.

MacIntyre argues that the Encyclopaedia and the Genealogy are inverted images of each other. Both reject the Tradition’s concepts of teleology and natural law; both begin from the assumption that there is no objective human nature that defines a final end. But they draw opposite conclusions from this premise. The Encyclopaedia, having rejected the Tradition’s teleology, seeks to ground morality on a new foundation — on universal principles of reason that are independent of any particular conception of the human good. The Encyclopaedist believes that reason, properly understood, can provide a substitute for the lost teleology, a set of moral rules that any rational person would accept. The Genealogy, having rejected the Tradition’s teleology, concludes that morality has no rational foundation at all. The Genealogist sees the Encyclopaedia’s attempt to find a new foundation as a continuation of the same illusion: the belief that morality can be grounded in something other than power. Both traditions are modern in the sense that they reject the classical and medieval synthesis; both are attempts to deal with the collapse of the teleological worldview. But they deal with it in opposite ways: the Encyclopaedia by trying to rebuild morality on a new basis, the Genealogy by exposing the impossibility of any such rebuilding.

To make this conflict concrete, MacIntyre examines the Encyclopaedia’s response to the Genealogical challenge. The Encyclopaedist, faced with the claim that all morality is a mask for power, typically responds by appealing to the universal validity of moral principles. The Genealogist, she argues, is simply wrong: there are moral truths that are binding on all rational agents, and these truths can be discovered by the methods of philosophical analysis or scientific enquiry. The Genealogist’s claims about the will to power and *ressentiment* are merely psychological speculations, not philosophical arguments. They do not refute the possibility of objective morality; they only assert that such a morality does not exist. But the Encyclopaedist must then confront a deeper problem: if the Genealogist is right that the Encyclopaedia’s first principles are not self-evident, if they are themselves products of a particular historical and social context, then the Encyclopaedia’s claim to universality collapses. The Genealogist does not need to prove that the Encyclopaedia’s principles are false; it is enough to show that they are not universal, that they are the principles of a particular tradition of enquiry — namely, the modern liberal tradition that emerged from the Enlightenment. The Encyclopaedia’s response to this challenge is typically to argue that the Genealogist’s own claims are self-refuting: if all claims to truth are masks for power, then the Genealogist’s own claim is itself a mask for power, and therefore cannot be accepted as true. But the Genealogist has a response to this: the Genealogist does not claim to have discovered a truth that is valid for all; the Genealogist only claims to have exposed the operations of power in the Encyclopaedia’s claims, and this exposure is itself a tactical move in the struggle of wills, not a philosophical argument.

“The encyclopaedist and the genealogist are, it seems, fated to misunderstand each other, because each takes the other to be making a claim of a kind that the other is not in fact making.”

This passage reveals the deep confusion at the heart of the modern moral predicament. The Encyclopaedia assumes that the Genealogy is making a truth-claim that can be refuted by standard philosophical arguments; the Genealogy assumes that the Encyclopaedia is making a power-claim that can be exposed by historical and psychological analysis. Neither tradition understands the other on its own terms. The Encyclopaedia cannot see that the Genealogy is not a theory about morality but a practice of unmasking; the Genealogy cannot see that the Encyclopaedia is not a mask for power but a genuine attempt to find rational foundations for morality. This mutual misunderstanding is not accidental; it is a consequence of the incommensurability of the two traditions. They do not share a common understanding of what a rational argument is, what a successful refutation would look like, or what counts as evidence for a moral claim.

What this means for the overall argument is that MacIntyre is presenting the modern moral situation as a series of unresolved and unresolvable conflicts. The Encyclopaedia cannot answer the Genealogy because the Genealogy does not accept the Encyclopaedia’s standards of argument; the Genealogy cannot refute the Encyclopaedia because the Genealogy does not claim to be making truth-claims in the first place. The reader is left with the impression that modern moral culture is a battlefield on which two irreconcilable forces are locked in a struggle that cannot be resolved by rational means. And this, MacIntyre suggests, is precisely why a third tradition — the Tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas — might be necessary: because it offers a way of understanding the conflict that neither the Encyclopaedia nor the Genealogy can provide.

The Tradition’s Self-Understanding: Dialectical Development and Rational Progress

We now move from the external conflicts between traditions to the internal structure of the Tradition itself. This section presents MacIntyre’s account of how a tradition of enquiry develops over time, how it tests its own claims, and how it can legitimately claim to make rational progress. This is not a description of the Tradition’s specific doctrines but of its methodology — its understanding of how rational enquiry actually works.

MacIntyre argues that a tradition of enquiry is not a static body of doctrine but a living process of dialectical development. A tradition begins with a set of authoritative texts and exemplary figures — in the case of the Thomistic Aristotelian tradition, the works of Aristotle and the commentaries of Aquinas. These texts and figures provide the initial framework for enquiry: they define the questions that are worth asking, the methods that are appropriate for answering them, and the standards by which answers are to be judged. But these authorities are not infallible; they are starting points for a process of ongoing enquiry. The tradition develops through a series of internal debates and external challenges. Internal debates arise when members of the tradition disagree about the interpretation of the authoritative texts or about the implications of the tradition’s core commitments. These debates are not signs of weakness; they are the engine of the tradition’s growth. Through them, the tradition refines its concepts, clarifies its claims, and corrects its errors. External challenges arise when the tradition encounters rival traditions with different claims and standards. These challenges are also opportunities for growth: by engaging with rivals, the tradition is forced to articulate its own position more clearly and to defend it against objections it had not previously considered.

The key to the Tradition’s understanding of rationality is its concept of epistemological crisis. An epistemological crisis occurs when a tradition faces a problem that it cannot solve using its own resources, a problem that threatens the tradition’s entire framework of enquiry. In such a crisis, the tradition must either find a way to resolve the problem from within or acknowledge that it has been defeated by a rival tradition. MacIntyre gives the example of the crisis that faced the Aristotelian tradition in the late medieval and early modern periods, when the development of modern physics seemed to contradict Aristotle’s account of motion and change. For a time, it appeared that the Aristotelian tradition could not survive this challenge. But Aquinas, MacIntyre argues, had already shown how the tradition could be reformed and renewed by incorporating insights from other traditions — in Aquinas’s case, from the Augustinian and Islamic philosophical traditions. The Aristotelian tradition survived its crisis not by stubbornly refusing to change but by creatively reinterpreting its own core commitments in light of new challenges. This is what MacIntyre calls rational progress within a tradition: the process by which a tradition, through engaging with its own problems and with rival traditions, develops a more adequate understanding of its subject matter and a more refined set of standards for judging the adequacy of its claims.

“A tradition of enquiry is a socially embodied argument, an argument precisely in part about the goods which constitute that tradition.”

This passage captures the dynamic and self-critical character of the Tradition. A tradition is not a set of doctrines to be passively accepted; it is an ongoing argument about what those doctrines mean and how they should be applied. The goods of the tradition — the virtues, the practices, the forms of life that the tradition values — are themselves the subject of the argument. This means that the tradition is never finished, never complete; it is always in the process of becoming more adequate, more truthful, more rational. And this process of becoming is itself rational, not arbitrary, because it is governed by standards that emerge from within the tradition and are refined through the tradition’s own history.

What this means for the overall argument is that MacIntyre is offering an alternative to both the Encyclopaedia’s static rationalism and the Genealogy’s corrosive suspicion. The Tradition does not claim to have access to universal truths that are valid for all time; it claims to have a superior method for making progress in understanding the human good. This method is historical and dialectical, not a priori and systematic. It acknowledges the possibility of error and the need for correction; it welcomes challenge and debate; it is open to learning from rival traditions. But it does not thereby abandon the claim to rationality: it redefines rationality as the capacity of a tradition to overcome its own crises and to incorporate the insights of its rivals. The reader is now prepared to see that the Tradition’s claim to superiority rests not on its possession of timeless truths but on its demonstrated ability to learn from its own history and from its encounters with other traditions.

Tradition and Rationality: The Thomistic Integration

We are at the point in the work where MacIntyre has laid out the three rival versions of moral enquiry and is now turning to a detailed exposition of the Tradition, specifically the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, to show how it offers a compelling account of rationality that the other two versions cannot match. The key move is to argue that the Tradition, in its Thomistic form, provides an internal resolution to the problems of incommensurability and conflict between rival traditions.

The central text of this section is the Summa Theologiae, and MacIntyre argues that Aquinas’s achievement is to have integrated two distinct and previously conflicting traditions—Augustinian Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism—into a single, coherent system of thought. This was not a simple synthesis but a dialectical engagement: Aquinas recognized that each tradition had genuine insights and genuine problems, and he reworked them both from within to produce a new, richer account of the good and of reason. MacIntyre writes: “Aquinas brings to his reading of Aristotle a set of Augustinian questions, and he brings to his reading of Augustine a set of Aristotelian questions.” This mutual interrogation is the engine of his integration. For example, the Augustinian problem of the will’s weakness and the need for divine grace is rethought through Aristotelian categories of habit and virtue, while the Aristotelian account of the human end (eudaimonia) is reoriented toward a supernatural end (beatitude) that cannot be fully described in purely natural terms. The result is not a mixing but a genuine transformative synthesis, in which each tradition is preserved and elevated by being placed within a larger framework.

What does this mean for rationality? For MacIntyre, Aquinas’s method exemplifies what it means for a tradition to be rational. It is not about adhering to timeless principles or applying universal criteria; it is about the capacity to confront problems that arise within a tradition’s own terms, and to resolve them by drawing on resources from within or from other traditions. The Thomistic integration shows that the best form of rational enquiry is not a neutral method but a tradition-constituted engagement with the truth. As MacIntyre puts it, “The rationality of a tradition is a matter of the way in which it is able, through its own history, to identify and to correct its own mistakes.” The success of the Thomistic project—its ability to produce a coherent, comprehensive, and enduring account of morality and human flourishing—is evidence that this kind of rationality is real and powerful. The Tradition, then, does not merely assert its claims; it demonstrates its ability to learn, to grow, and to incorporate what is best in its rivals.

The Quest for a Universal Moral Language: The Encyclopaedia’s Unfinished Project

We are now at a crucial juncture where MacIntyre examines the Encyclopaedia’s attempt to establish a universal moral language, based on principles of rational consensus and scientific progress, and argues that this attempt has been a failure. The key insight is that the Encyclopaedia’s own internal development has undermined its foundational assumptions. The section focuses on the fate of the Encyclopaedia Britannica itself, from its ninth to its eleventh and fifteenth editions. In the ninth edition (1875-1889), the Encyclopaedia is still confident that moral enquiry is converging on a single, universal truth. The articles on ethics and morality are written from a broadly Kantian or utilitarian perspective, assuming that rational persons, properly educated, will agree on the basic principles of morality. There is a sense of progress, of a unified body of knowledge being accumulated and refined.

By the eleventh edition (1910-1911), however, cracks begin to appear. The moral articles are no longer uniform: there are competing entries, reflecting different philosophical schools, and the editors have to acknowledge that disagreements exist even among experts. MacIntyre notes that “the confidence of the ninth edition has given way to a kind of uneasy pluralism.” The rational consensus is no longer self-evident. By the fifteenth edition (1974 onward), the situation has changed dramatically. The Encyclopaedia has abandoned the attempt to present a unified moral science altogether. Instead, it offers a series of entries on different moral theories—deontology, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, relativism—without any attempt to adjudicate between them. The implicit message is that morality is a field of irreducible disagreement, where no single account can claim rational superiority. The Encyclopaedia has transformed from a monument to rational unity into a museum of conflicting viewpoints.

MacIntyre’s argument is that this transformation is not accidental but inevitable. The Encyclopaedia’s project was based on the assumption that moral enquiry could be conducted from a neutral, universal standpoint, free from the constraints of tradition. But this assumption is itself a tradition—the tradition of the Enlightenment—and it carries its own particular biases and blind spots. When that tradition comes into contact with others, it cannot adjudicate the resulting conflicts because it has no resources for doing so. It can only present them side by side, as equally valid options. The Encyclopaedia thus ends up in a state of fragmentation, unable to provide the coherent moral guidance it once promised. For MacIntyre, this is a direct consequence of the failure to recognize that all moral enquiry is tradition-constituted. The attempt to escape tradition leads not to universal rationality but to intellectual anarchy.

The Genealogy’s Critique of the Subject: From Nietzsche to Foucault

We now turn to the Genealogy’s most radical challenge: the critique of the modern concept of the subject. MacIntyre shows that the genealogical tradition, from Nietzsche through Foucault, has systematically dismantled the idea that there is a unified, autonomous self that can be the foundation of moral agency. This is not a peripheral point but the core of the genealogical attack on morality itself. Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals is the founding text: he argues that the very concept of the self as a free, responsible agent is a historical invention, constructed by the slave morality to enable the internalization of resentment. The “subject” is not a pre-existing entity but an effect of power relations—a product of the disciplinary practices that have shaped Western consciousness.

Foucault extends this argument into a detailed historical analysis of how the modern subject has been produced by various techniques of power/knowledge. In *Discipline and Punish*, he shows how the prison, the asylum, and the clinic have created new forms of subjectivity—the delinquent, the madman, the patient—by inscribing power onto the body. In *The History of Sexuality*, he argues that the very idea of a “sexual identity” is a recent construction, a result of the confessional practices and medical discourses of the 19th century. For Foucault, there is no fixed human nature; there are only historically contingent ways of being human, produced by specific configurations of power. The genealogical method exposes these constructions, showing that what we take to be natural or universal is actually arbitrary and imposed.

MacIntyre’s response is not to deny the power of this critique but to challenge its coherence. He asks: if the subject is merely a construction of power, then what about the genealogist himself? What is the status of the genealogist’s own claims? If all knowledge is an effect of power, then the genealogist’s own knowledge is equally contingent and suspect. The genealogical critique is thus self-refuting: it cannot provide a foundation for its own claims without implicitly appealing to some standard of truth or objectivity that it has denied to others. Moreover, MacIntyre argues that the genealogist’s own life—his commitments, his struggles, his projects—seems to presuppose a unified self capable of sustained enquiry and moral engagement. The genealogist cannot consistently live out his own theory. This is a crucial point: the Tradition’s account of the self, as a rational animal with a telos and a history, can accommodate the genealogical critique as a partial truth—yes, the self is shaped by history and power—without giving up the claim that there is also a real, substantive self capable of rational enquiry and moral development.

The Return to Aristotle: Practical Reasoning and the Good

In this section, MacIntyre returns to Aristotle’s ethical writings, particularly the *Nicomachean Ethics*, to provide a positive account of practical reasoning that the encyclopaedic and genealogical approaches have lost. The central claim is that practical reasoning is not just a matter of applying universal rules or calculating consequences; it is a matter of deliberating about what is good for a human being, given a specific character and a specific situation. Aristotle’s account is based on the idea of the phronimos, the person of practical wisdom, who has been properly habituated and educated to see what is good and to act accordingly. The phronimos does not need a rule book; he has developed the capacity to perceive the morally salient features of a situation and to respond appropriately.

MacIntyre emphasizes that this kind of reasoning is teleological: it is oriented toward the good, and the good is understood in terms of the proper function of a human being. Just as a good watch is one that keeps accurate time, a good human being is one who fulfills the distinctive human function—which Aristotle identifies as a life of rational activity, guided by virtue. The virtues are the dispositions that enable a person to perform this function well; they are not arbitrary rules but the qualities that make for a flourishing human life. The key passage from Aristotle that MacIntyre cites is: “The good of man is the active exercise of his soul’s faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue, and if there be more than one virtue, in conformity with the best and most complete.” This is the heart of the Aristotelian tradition: morality is not about following rules or maximizing pleasure; it is about becoming the kind of person who can live well.

For MacIntyre, this Aristotelian framework provides a way out of the impasse between the Encyclopaedia and the Genealogy. The Encyclopaedia is right that morality is rational, but it wrongly identifies rationality with the application of universal rules. The Genealogy is right that morality is historical and contingent, but it wrongly concludes that it is therefore arbitrary. The Tradition, by contrast, sees morality as rational *precisely because* it is historical and contingent: the rationality of a moral tradition inheres in its ability to learn from its own history, to correct its errors, and to progress toward a more adequate understanding of the good. This progress is not a steady accumulation of objective facts—as the Encyclopaedia imagined—but a dialectical process of self-correction and transformation, in which the tradition’s own standards of rationality are themselves open to revision in the light of new experiences and challenges.

The Conflict of Traditions and the Future of Moral Enquiry

We now arrive at the final phase of the work, where MacIntyre examines the implications of his analysis for the present state of moral enquiry. The central problem is that we live in a world of multiple, incommensurable moral traditions, and there is no neutral standpoint from which to adjudicate between them. The encyclopaedic attempt to create such a standpoint has failed; the genealogical attempt to debunk all standpoints has proven self-defeating. What, then, is to be done? MacIntyre’s answer is that the only rational way forward is to recognize the reality of this situation and to engage in a form of dialectical encounter between traditions, in which each tradition seeks to understand its rivals from within, on their own terms, and to show that it can resolve the problems that the rival cannot.

This is not a recipe for relativism. For MacIntyre, it is a recipe for rational progress. A tradition that can successfully explain why another tradition has reached an impasse, and that can incorporate the insights of that tradition into its own framework, is a tradition that has advanced in its understanding of the truth. The Tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas, he argues, has a unique capacity for this kind of dialectical engagement. It has already demonstrated its ability to integrate foreign elements—from Augustine to Aquinas, from Greek philosophy to Christian theology—and to emerge stronger. It is open to learning from the encyclopaedic emphasis on systematic enquiry and from the genealogical emphasis on historical critique. But it does so while maintaining its own core commitments: the existence of a human telos, the reality of virtue as a disposition toward the good, and the possibility of rational progress through tradition-constituted enquiry.

The final pages of the work are therefore not a conclusion but an invitation. MacIntyre does not claim that the Tradition has won a final victory; he claims that it has the resources to engage in the ongoing conflict of traditions in a rational and productive way. The future of moral enquiry depends on whether we can learn to see our own tradition—whatever it may be—as one among many, and to engage with others in a spirit of dialectical openness. This is the path beyond the impasse of modern moral philosophy. It is a path that requires humility, patience, and a willingness to learn from history. And it is a path that leads not to certainty but to a deeper, more adequate understanding of the human good. The work ends not with a final word, but with the beginning of a conversation—a conversation that the reader is now invited to enter.