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The Benjamin E. Lippincott Award is given annually to a living political theorist for a work of exceptional quality that is still considered significant after a time span of at least 15 years since the publication date. Supported by the University of Minnesota.

Award Committee: Simone Chambers, Chair, University of Toronto; Virginia Sapiro, Boston University; and Ian Shapiro, Yale University

Recipient: Alasdair MacIntyre, University of Notre Dame

Publication: After Virtue (1981)

Citation: After Virtue has made a lasting contribution to the discipline of political philosophy. It was one of the books that shaped the liberal-communitarian debate of the 1980s. However, MacIntyre’s book raised problems and articulated themes that have outlived that debate. In common with several previous distinguished winners of this prize – Hannah Arendt in 1975, Eric Voegelin in 1978, Sheldon Wolin in 1985 – Alasdair MacIntyre has presented himself as a resolute critic of modernity. What distinguishes his theorizing from other critiques of modernity is his relentless focus on whether modern liberal society can vindicate itself with respect to its provision of moral resources, resources for the building of character and coherent moral identity, or what one may also call “narrative resources.” All societies individuate themselves, and give themselves moral and existential coherence, by enabling their members to tell stories that teach meaning, deepen experience, and supply exemplars. What stories do modern liberal societies teach to liberal selves? This is not an easy question to answer, and in a series of powerful and penetrating books, starting with After Virtue but pursued in a set of forceful sequels, MacIntyre poses challenges that modern liberal society has to confront if it is to redeem its own self-understanding and that of all those educated within its horizons. In doing so, MacIntyre has highlighted more effectively than any other contemporary theorist the perennial importance of virtue ethics, as articulated particularly in Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition.

One of MacIntyre’s distinctive themes is that philosophy promises not just debate and disagreement but the possibility of rational adjudication of these disagreements. Defenders of liberalism often see disagreement as such as a good or at least as a sign of health and not as a source of moral incoherence in need of being transcended. But again, MacIntyre challenges liberal self-understanding with respect to its most cherished or core presuppositions. The purpose of philosophy, on MacIntyre’s view, is not just to let our disagreements play out to all eternity but rather to build rational bases of shared moral and philosophical understanding. By highlighting moral, political, and intellectual diversity as a problem rather than as an assumed liberal virtue, MacIntyre himself (in some respects in tension with his own deepest intention) actually helps broaden and enliven this diversity.