Alasdair MacIntyre's Revolutionary Aristotelianism

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Revolutionary Aristotelianism: Ethics, Resistance and Utopia

Friday 29th June to Sunday 1st July 2007
For more than half a century Alasdair MacIntyre has remained a fervent critic of the structural injustices of capitalism. Indeed, nothing could be further from the truth than the all too frequent mischaracterisation of his mature ethical thought as a form of communitarian conservatism. From Marxism: An Interpretation through his essays for the New and Trotskyist lefts of the 1950s and 1960s to After Virtue and subsequent texts, MacIntyre has attempted to articulate and defend a form of politics that is adequate to the needs of radical opponents of liberalism in our modern world.

In his recent works, MacIntyre has attacked the contradiction between the Aristotelian idea of people as they could be if they realised their telos and, on the other hand, capitalism’s systematic thwarting of people’s abilities to reach their potentials. To this he has added that radicals need to articulate a ‘politics of self-defence’ rooted in practices that challenge the instrumental reasoning of state bureaucracy and capitalist management.

MacIntyre’s thought constitutes a challenge to a range of ideologies hostile to the Aristotelian tradition. His adoption of Thomistic thought, along with his emphasis on virtue ethics, has provided the foundation for a much needed re-examination of the sources of moral and political philosophy. His commitment to realism highlights relativism’s limits and contests the idea that morality and politics are matters of mere social consensus. As he says in prefacing Ethics and Politics, ‘theoretical resources ... from Aristotle, Aquinas, and Marx, need to be put to work both in negative critique and in articulating the goods and goals of particular political and social projects’.

It is the view of the organisers of this conference that MacIntyre’s ethics of human flourishing, politics of resistance and practical utopianism contribute powerfully to the contemporary resurgence of radical politics. It is with a view to exploring these revolutionary implications of MacIntyre’s work that we welcome contributions to a conference on the importance of his ideas.

Keynote speakers:

Alex Callinicos, Professor of European Studies, King's College London

Russell Keat, Professor of Political Theory, University of Edinburgh

Anton Leist, Professor of Practical Philosophy, University of Zürich

Cary J. Nederman, Professor of Political Science, Texas A & M University

Sean Sayers, Professor of Philosophy, University of Kent


Other speakers include:

Paul Blackledge, co-editor of Alasdair MacIntyre's Marxist Writings, 2007.

Thomas D. D'Andrea, author of Tradition, Rationality, and Virtue: The Thought of Alasdair MacIntyre, 2006.

Neil Davidson, co-editor of Alasdair MacIntyre's Marxist Writings, 2007.

Kelvin Knight, author of Aristotelian Philosophy: Ethics and Politics from Aristotle to MacIntyre, 2007.

Christopher Lutz, author of Tradition in the Ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre: Relativism, Thomism, and Philosophy, 2004.

Peter McMylor, author of Alasdair MacIntyre: Critic of Modernity, 1994.

Emile Perreau-Saussine, author of Alasdair MacIntyre, une biographie intellectuelle: Introduction aux critiques contemporaines du libéralisme, 2005

Further Information

This three-day conference hosted by the Human Rights & Social Justice Research Institute and will be held at London Metropolitan University, 166-220 Holloway Road, London N7 8DB.

APSANet post

The conference fee is £115.00 for three days, £100.00 for two days or £75.00 for one day. (Ticket prices are at the discretion of the conference organisers).




Accommodation costs £45.00 per person per night.




To register for the conference please complete the Registration and Payment Form and return to Ian Waller, HRSJ Research Institute, London Metropolitan University, Ladbroke House, 62-66 Highbury Grove, London N5 2AD, UK

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7133 5095 / Fax: +44 (0) 20 7133 5101 / Email: i.waller@londonmet.ac.uk

Conference Organisers


Dr Paul Blackledge, Dr Alan Haworth, Richard Kirkwood, Dr Kelvin Knight, Dr Jacqui Laing, Dr Seiriol Morgan, Lachie Munro, Dr Mohammad Nafissi, Cronain O'Kelly, Alberta Stevens and Ian Waller