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or emotion. In his view, moral judgements are expressions of approval or disapproval and not derivable from any rational analysis. As Hume firmly stated, “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions,” meaning reason helps us to achieve what desire but cannot determine what is morally right or wrong on its own. To MacIntyre, Hume’s idea of moral law is emotion bring about subjective feeling rather than objective moral laws; thus he rejected Humean idea of moral law.

Nature and Focus of MacIntyre’s After Virtue

In his After Virtue (1981) MacIntyre focussed on ideology and moral knowledge. He became unhappy with how modern societies handle moral issues. He argues that today’s moral discussion and confusion are disturbing and do not make sense. To him we can see confusion in moral arguments about things like justice, right, freedom and morality. For instance, imagine a social moral fight about free speech and hate speech. One person says free speech is most important, while another says people should be protected from harmful words. Apparently, both have strong opinions, but they do not agree because they are using different moral systems that do not fit together. MacIntyre believes this kind of disagreement shows a problem in how we think about ethics today.

By his argument, he posits that contemporary moral debates are characterized by deep disagreement that can’t be resolved because modern ethics has lost its grounding in a shared framework of virtue and human purpose. He traces this moral confusion to enlightenment’s rejection…

of teleology — the idea that human life has an inherent purpose of good (telos). And with this rejection, he contends that moral language becomes empty and concepts like justice or rights are used rhetorically rather than meaningfully. As a result of these disagreements and confusion as regards moral issues, there arose a large moral problem in this age.

According to MacIntyre, in a quest to overcome the confusion that permeates the modern society due to the collapse of a shared moral tradition, there should be an instant return for a virtue-based ethical system, rooted in the inspiration of the classical philosophy, particularly Aristotle’s notion of human flourishing (eudaimonia). To him, virtues are only better understood in the context of practices, traditions, and the unity of a human life.

In order to achieve a well-organized society, MacIntyre reintegrates Aristotle’s moral framework and cultivated moral character. With the moral rules and laws being grounded in virtues such as transparency, courage, temperance, fidelity, justice, honesty, loyalty, compassion, generosity, love, humility, perseverance, prudence etc., the society would be able to overcome those moral dilemmas and confusion which would eventually bring about a flourishing life end among all as proposed by Aristotle.

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics explores the nature of human life and the cultivation of virtue as path to human flourishing or Eudaimonia. Aristotle argues that all human actions aim at some perceived good and the highest good is happiness, which has to do with the fulfilment of one’s rational capacities over a complete life whole. For Aristotle, it is a mean between two extremes of excess and deficiency. For instance, courage is a mean between recklessness and cowardice. He believes that virtues are not…

innate but are developed through habit and practices within a moral community. Aristotle categorized virtues into moral virtues and intellectual virtues. Moral virtues include temperance and generosity, while intellectual virtues include wisdom and understanding. In Aristotle, moral virtues arise from regulation of desire while intellectual virtues stem from reason. He emphasized the importance of practical wisdom (Phronesis) in navigating complex moral decision-making.

Hilary Putnam

Hilary Putnam was a renowned American philosopher whose work profoundly shaped multiple areas of philosophy, including philosophy of mind, language, science and ethics. Born in Chicago in 1926, he studied at the University of Pennsylvania and later earned his PhD at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) under Hans Reichenbach.

Putnam was initially rooted in the analytic tradition, having been formed in the methodology of logical positivism and influenced by philosophers as Carnap and Quine, in believing that any meaningful philosopher with a confidence that reality can be known objectively with the help of language, analysis and logic.

However, his philosophical journey was marked by a growing dissatisfaction with the doctrine of the analytic philosophy as he eventually realized that analytic philosophy was too rigid to explain reality. This dissatisfaction led to a shift in his career, commonly referred to as his “post-analytic” phase, where he engaged with pragmatism, internal realism (ethical nominalism) and epistemic pluralism, as he combined the trends of analytic philosophy with those of quantum and moral philosophizing in order to arrive at a very holistic way of interpreting reality.

Putnam’s work during this period was not a complete rejection of analytic philosophy but a critique of their limitations and a call for a more human-centered, pluralistic and normatively engaged philosophy.

Influences on Putnam’s Post-Analytic Thought

Hilary Putnam was strongly influenced by Rudolf Carnap in the early part of his career. Carnap, being a logical positivist, believes that many philosophical problems could be solved by carefully studying language use in a scientific philosophical problem and using logical analyses to solve them. Carnap thought that only statements that could be verified scientifically were meaningful. Putnam initially accepted this and worked within Carnap’s system of logical analysis. Later, Putnam began to see that Carnap’s approach was too narrow as it ignored important areas like ethics and everyday human values.

Also, in his later work, Putnam was deeply influenced by Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce’s pragmatic theory of meaning indicates that the meaning of a concept lies in its practical effect. This influenced Putnam in developing his view that truth is not about matching reality in a perfect way, but about what would be rationally acceptable through practical outcome.

Putnam’s Post-Analytic Philosophy

One of the most essential themes in Putnam’s post-analytic philosophy is his concept of internal realism, which he developed as an alternative to metaphysical realism and radical relativism. Metaphysical realism is the idea that holds that truth exists completely outside human thought, while radical relativism preaches that truth is just personal opinion. To Putnam, truth is not…

just about matching some perfect reality beyond us. Instead, it is what we would accept if we had the best reasons and evidence. Putnam rejects the view that the world cannot be known without human influence and societal values. To him, culture and understanding of consciousness are the ways through which humans interpret the world. He criticized the philosophers who believed that the world can be known objectively, as if it is viewed through a “God’s own eyes.”

Putnam also moved away from classical epistemology towards pragmatism where he argues that philosophy is not supposed to be just about abstract theory, but ought to be a useful, practical, ethical and humanistic. To him, philosophy should be able to generate deep moral reflections and bring philosophy close to humanity, unlike classical philosophy that was just abstract in nature. He moved away from Hegelian philosophies (speculative) as he moved closer to pragmatism.

Putnam also tried to confine science and study distant from real-life concerns just like analytic philosophers were doing. He put philosophy at the pedestal of science.

Through his emphasis of pragmatism, Putnam showed that philosophy should deal with the way we live in not an imagined perfect one. He drew from thinkers on both traditions of analytic and continental divides such as Carnap, Quine, Dewey, William James etc. to show that philosophy should help us understand our values, beliefs and social lives. He believes that even though these two groups seemed initially different, they actually care about same questions. For instance, they both are interested in…

in knowing what it means for something to be “objective.” They used different ways and tools to answer these same questions.

Putnam’s post-analytic philosophy also challenged the idea that facts and values are separated completely. The analytic philosophy influenced by thinkers like Carnap and logical positivists often see facts as objective while values were seen often as just personal feelings and so incapable of bringing about truth. Putnam rejected this in his book The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy (2002), where he argued that ethical judgments are reasonable even though they are not scientific facts. Drawing from philosophers like Dewey, he showed that moral values and point of how we talk, reason and live. To him, they are not just personal feelings and they do belong at the center of philosophy.

For Putnam, philosophy should serve as one of those things that makes philosophy more connected to human life and experience. For example, some economists argue that their models are entirely objective when they insist on things such as the belief that the banks need to be free without letting personal opinion get in the way, or they present figures as hard, fixed and not mixed with values. However, Putnam argues this is not really true, that even though economic models use predictions, they are not just facts, they are value-laden.

Criticism of Putnam’s Post-Analytic Philosophy

However, its attractiveness, Putnam’s post-analytic ideas faced huge criticisms, among which is the rejection of his idea of internal realism as a vague idea. For example, philosophers like Paul Boghossian said that if truth is just what people would accept under its best conditions, then different people might still disagree on what…

those “best conditions,” one. In another debate, even some argue that Putnam’s rejection of the dichotomy between facts and values makes it harder to tell the difference between what is true and what is just someone’s opinion about right and wrong.