Research Paper on:
Whose Justice? Which Rationality? by Alasdair MacIntyre

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (1988) can be seen as a companion volume to MacIntyres most influence book After Virtue (1981), as this book largely carries on the arguments presented in  the former book. In his preface to Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, MacIntyre writes that he came to realize that the conclusions reached in After Virtue "required support from  an account of rationality is, in the light of which rival and incompatible evaluations of the arguments of After Virtue could be adequately accounted for" (MacIntyre ix). To adequately  understand Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, one must first see it in terms that reflect the arguments of After Virtue. MacIntyre himself views WJ?WR? as a continuation of After Virtue  that provides a needed account of practical rationality that enables the reader to relate in what sense moral disagreements can be rationally resolved with a tradition of thought (Miller 246).  In After Virtue, MacIntyre presents an elaborate and detailed argument that moral theory and practice are in a state of chaos in contemporary society, which is largely the result of  the liberal individualism of the Enlightenment. To correct this situation, MacIntyre proposes a return to the Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics, a stance that is quite compatible with the doctrines  of the Catholic Church. MacIntyre introduces his principal thesis in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? by pointing out that formidable range of questions that as associated with issues of justice,  questions that range from the injustice of social inequities to the morality of legalized abortion and war. MacIntyre then posits that underlying the modern morass of indecision on these topics  are conflicting conceptions of justice, "conceptions which are strikingly at odds with one another in a number of ways" (1). According to Honderich, et al, MacIntyres perspective is primarily