...Alasdair Maclntyre, in a provocative study of the state of moral understanding in the West, asserted that “What matters at this stage is the construction...civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustamed through the dark ages which are already among us?' 42 In a time of sharp moral disagreement...

...ordinary people and in another to the intellectual elite" (p. 238). So we must go back to the beginning. "What matters at this stage is the construction of...new dark ages which are already upon us" (p. 263). As what might be called "culture-criticism" Maclntyre's argument is impressive. Hence, although I cannot...

...this question can only be Yes. At least, this is how he concludes his penetrating study After Virtue: “What matters at this stage is the construction...through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not...

...message of political pessimism and inactivity. Quite the opposite - it is a call, once more, for action: 'What matters at this stage is the construction of...through the new dark ages which are already upon us." A politics of virtue thus takes the paradoxical form of an attempt to create, by political action,...

...good will"— that they quietly withdraw from the political life of liberal democracy and engage in the "construction of local forms of community within...sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us"—is apocalyptic. 31 The truth in these criticisms, however, is compatible with MacIntyre's central...

...MacIntyre suggests that consensus is impossible to achieve and so desirable instead is "the creation of local forms of community within which civility...through the new dark ages which are already upon us." 121 117 J Morse, "The Missing Link between Virtue Theory and Business Ethics" (1999) 16 Journal of...

...what happened in Rome and that today, amidst the moral disintegration of our society, we should begin “the construction of local forms of community within...moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages that are already upon us.”° That may be the only path toward survival at some point in the future,...

...to be repeated by small communities of like-minded followers of virtues in a pre-modern tradition, 'within which civility and the intellectual and moral...through the new dark ages which are already upon us'. 7 In his second book, seemingly imbued with a sense of Christian hope rather than Greek pessimism,...

...fifty-five years later, Maclntyre concludes After Virtue with the observation: "What matters at this state is the construction of local forms of community within...the intellectual and moral life can be sustained" (1981, p. 245). The effects of naturalism have been to restrict the rational world paradigm to specialized...

...society, all is not lost. With Maclntyre, I believe that it is both possible and necessary to work for the “construction of local forms of community within...the intellectual and moral life can be sustained.” Such communities, in their process of formulation, might well look for guidance to past practices of...