There's a neat article on Alasdair MacIntyre on Arts and Letters Daily. It's broadly approving of the Great Man, which you can tell by this quote:
"Ever since he published his key text After Virtue in 1981, he has argued that moral behaviour begins with the good practice of a profession, trade, or art: playing the violin, cutting hair, brick-laying, teaching philosophy. Through these everyday social practices, he maintains, people develop the appropriate virtues. In other words, the virtues necessary for human flourishing are not a result of the top-down application of abstract ethical principles, but the development of good character in everyday life.... MacIntyre yearns for a single, shared view of the good life as opposed to modern pluralism’s assumption that there can be many competing views of how to live well."
I bet you were nodding along, if not admiring the solemn seriousness of it all. "Good practice of a profession", "everyday social practices", "appropriate virtues", "development of good character in everyday life", "single, shared view of the good life". How many questions can you beg in so few phrases? And how much naivety about people can you show?
There is absolutely no connection between being good at your trade and being a decent person. In fact, everything I know about being any good at anything tells me that the relationship is slightly negative: the better you are at your trade, the more time and energy you have put into it and the less you have for family, friends and assorted Good Deeds. I have met people with very high energy levels who can consult with McKinsey, sit on the board of a charity, snowboard at the weekend and play with the kids - but they had the salaries to afford it. I have also met people who are not very good at anything much, oh, except being parents and citizens.
What irritates me is the implicit assumption that the world is organised in such a way that we can thrive, feed our families and be fulfilled craftsmen and virtuous at the same time. How does anyone thrive on a nurse's salary? How does anyone live honestly when they have to bribe the railway clerks to buy a ticket? How does someone even learn a craft if their employer has no training programme and keeps dumbing-down the work? And who said that we would all fall in love with the girl (or boy) next door? Given the make-up of households today, the odds against there even being a girl (or boy) next door are shorter than you might think.
There is no guarantee we will meet people with whom we can develop loving relationships, or that we will find someone to employ us to do something we find satisfying. Many people have such limited opportunities and hard circumstances that religion or whiskey are the only way they can get through the interminable months. Others enter their adult years so emotionally bruised and suspicious that they could not start and then sustain the relationships needed to work and love well. And so many of us turn to substitutes. There is nothing ignoble about substitutes, if we have little chance of getting the real thing. The religious enthusiasts, New Age mystics, compulsive computer-gamers and sorrow-drowners should be left alone: it is simply impolite to tell them they are missing out without also showing them how they could start to live well despite these disadvantages.
As for the idea that we should have a shared idea of the Good Life? How excellent that sounds, until you remember that we live in a world where there is not enough of anything worth having. There's sorrow, poverty, starvation, ill-health, contempt, ignorance, hatred and anger for every man and woman alive, with some over for seconds all round. The good stuff is in short supply - sunshine in Northern Europe, rain in Chad - because that's the way of the world. It's actually better for us to have different ideas of what the good stuff is: that way more of us might get satisfied. If you like fast cars and I like works of art, we can both satisfy ourselves without competing: if everyone agrees that Pre-Raphaelite art is the thing, almost all of them are going to be disappointed.
It simply won't do to pontificate in such a circular manner with assumptions about the world that just aren't true. It's too much reading Aristotle, of course. You have to have absorbed Aristotle to use words like "virtue" and mean it. Aristotle could do it because he was writing and speaking for an elite and wealthy audience, not merchants, barbers and brick-layers. (I have a feeling he says that such people can't actually live virtuous lives because their pursuits won't let them.) Our modern philosophers are not, and it would be a cruelty to their students and readers if they did. We need philosophers who are going to deal with the real world - one in which there is not even a link between obtaining a degree in philosophy and subsequently finding employment, and no link between employment and being able to afford somewhere to live an independent life.
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