domingo, 12 de julho de 2026

La complementariedad entre la ética y la política en el pensamiento de Alasdair Macintyre, novo livro de Martín Fernandéz


 

Resumen del libro

Según Alasdair MacIntyre, el ser humano solo puede desarrollarse plenamente en el marco de una comunidad, ya que es allí donde encuentra el entorno propicio para formarse y educarse mediante relaciones sociales significativas. El camino hacia el florecimiento personal exige tanto la práctica de las virtudes morales como de las intelectuales. No obstante, esta práctica solo cobra sentido dentro de un contexto social determinado, dado que las virtudes son, por naturaleza, ejercicios sociales. En este sentido, la realización de la perfección humana está intrínsecamente ligada a la perfección moral y requiere necesariamente de un contexto político adecuado.

Ahora bien, la ética no es una construcción teórica aislada, sino que debe encarnarse en la vida cotidiana. Su aprendizaje es esencialmente práctico y se da en el marco de las actividades comunes que realizan los individuos. La formación en virtudes tiene un efecto dual: por un lado, fortalece al individuo en tanto agente moral autónomo y razonador; por otro, contribuye al bien común, al reconocer que esa autonomía se sostiene en una racionalidad compartida y en vínculos de dependencia mutua. Así, se revela una profunda conexión entre la calidad de la vida política y la práctica ética de quienes forman parte de la sociedad.

Este enfoque permite afirmar que, en la filosofía de MacIntyre, ética y política se complementan mutuamente. No hay posibilidad de una ética efectiva sin un orden político que la sostenga, ni de una política orientada al bien común sin fundamentos éticos sólidos. Solo a partir de esta interdependencia puede pensarse una auténtica integración entre el bien personal y el bien colectivo.

INTRODUCCIÓN

CAPÍTULO 1. APROXIMACIÓN AL PENSAMIENTO DE MACINTYRE

1.1. Escritos y trayectoria académica

1.2. Evolución intelectual

1.3. Conclusiones del capítulo

CAPÍTULO 2. CONTEXTO TEÓRICO

2.1. Liberalismo

2.2. Postmodernismo

2.3. Republicanismo

2.4. Comunitarismo

2.5. Conclusiones del capítulo

CAPÍTULO 3. FUNDAMENTOS EPISTEMOLÓGICOS

3.1. Pertenencia a una tradición de investigación

3.2. Confrontación entre tradiciones

3.3. Metodología narrativa

3.4. Conceptos gnoseológicos

3.5. Investigación interdisciplinar

3.6. Unidad entre praxis y teoría

3.7. Conclusiones del capítulo

CAPÍTULO 4. DIAGNÓSTICO ÉTICO Y POLÍTICO

4.1. Enciclopedismo

4.2. Genealogismo

4.3. Conclusiones el capítulo

CAPÍTULO 5. LA RELACIÓN ENTRE LA ÉTICA Y LA POLÍTICA (I)

5.1. Antropología filosófica

5.2. Ética

5.3. Política

5.4. Conclusiones del capítulo

CAPÍTULO 6. LA RELACIÓN ENTRE LA ÉTICA Y LA POLÍTICA (II)

6.1. Antropología filosófica como fundamento de la ética y la política

6.2. Imprescindible complementariedad entre la ética y la política

6.3. Conclusiones del capítulo

CAPÍTULO 7. ALGUNAS DISCREPANCIAS

7.1. Discrepancias generales

7.2. Discrepancias específicas

7.3. Conclusiones del capítulo

CAPÍTULO 8. CONCLUSIONES GENERALES

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La política del bien común en Macintyre, editado por F. J. de la Torre Díaz. Maximiliano Loria e Lucio Nontol, com capítulo do Prof. Helder Buenos Aires de Carvalho

 


Estamos necesitados de una buena política, de virtudes cívicas, de la prudencia y la participación para perseguir el bien común. El actual contexto político mundial, nos urge a reflexionar sobre el peligro de los nacionalismos y los populismos exacerbados que engendran guerras y miseria. Se está gobernando desde el enfrentamiento, fragmentando las sociedades y comunidades desde su interior más profundo. Cada vez más polarizados, vivimos una política de ganadores y perdedores, de gobierno y oposición. Los proyectos comunes se tornan casi utópicos en estos tiempos de fragmentación y de incremento de las desigualdades. El individualismo extremo hace imposible que nos percibamos compartiendo un mismo destino, una misma tradición y unas mismas responsabilidades compartidas. Está desapareciendo el sentimiento de pertenencia que requiere toda comunidad.

No podemos dejar lo político en manos de minorías, ni podemos pensar que los Estados y mercados son neutrales pues están dejando fuera a millones de personas. Más allá del individualismo y los totalitarismos de Estado, estamos llamados a valorar y fortalecer las asociaciones intermedias como instrumento de libertad, para poner límites a los despotismos y adquirir virtudes políticas.

Siguiendo las huellas de MacIntyre, en este libro un grupo internacional de especialistas ofrecemos una reflexión sobre el valor de la deliberación, la participación, las estructuras intermedias, los bienes comunes, las virtudes políticas, los proyectos compartidos y la visión del ser humano como animal racional, político y dependiente. Esperamos que estas reflexiones aporten intuiciones y luces para una buena política, para una política del bien común.

Capítulo do Prof. Helder B. A. de Carvalho:

La política del bien común en Alasdair Macintyre: las bases necesarias para una agencia política tecnológicamente mediada, responsable y ambientalmente virtuosa
  • Helder Buenos Aires de Carvalho

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    AFTER MODERNITY: Del Noce, Weil, and MacIntyre: The Virtues of Place and Practice (in Light of Transcendence)

     


    After Modernity presents a critical appreciation of the thought of Augusto Del Noce, Simone Weil, and Alasdair MacIntyre, organised around key themes driving the ‘crisis of modernity.’ Although hailing from different philosophical traditions, these thinkers share a concern with the faultlines they perceive to underlie liberal modernity, their insights converging with respect to a good society and polity properly ordered to true ends. Particular emphasis is placed on the loss of transcendence and the need to recover transcendent standards by which to inspire and orient behaviour.


    The study opens with the work of Augusto Del Noce and his analysis of the ‘crisis of modernity.’ Here, Del Noce focuses upon the process of secularisation and the systematic rejection of a metaphysics based on transcendence. The loss of transcendence entailed the loss of moral absolutes, which in turn led ethics being replaced ‘scientism’ and ‘sociologism.’

    The principal focus is placed upon Del Noce’s critical examination of Marxism in relation to what he identified as its internal contradictions. The decomposition of Marxism - the loss of its ‘messianic’ (emancipatory-revolutionary) dimension - entails its disintegration and concomitant reintegration into the bourgeois society Marx sought to transform. Shorn of its emancipatory-revolutionary ‘metaphysics,’ Marx’s critique turns wholly destructive, now being turned against the traditional enemies of the bourgeois – remnants of the old order as well as the working class. That destruction paves the way not for socialism but for the rule of what Del Noce calls ‘great economic organisms’ – the corporations. Del Noce died a month after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and saw the fall as symbolic of Marxism’s fall and as portending modernity’s fall in the West.

    Simone Weil also identified inversion as lying at the source of the confusions and conflicts of the age. She refers to the transcendent as the     supernaturale, pertaining to the ‘other reality.’ Her concern is with attending to the reality of this world in light of the standards of the supernaturale. Her book The Need for Roots examines the causes and consequences of the great uprooting that has taken place in the modern world, weakening societies from within by dissolving ties and loyalties built up over centuries. She proceeds to identify what is required to root human beings in place and in community with others, and what it involved in feeding those roots to encourage their growth. The ‘fundamental life,’ she argues, depends on roots: ‘whoever is uprooted himself uproots others. Whoever is rooted himself doesn’t uproot others.’ That rooting is social, political, and, ultimately, spiritual.

    The study closes with a close critical examination of the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, paying particular attention to his practical philosophy in order to discern how an alternative society and polity, embodying genuine public community, could come to be achieved.

    I argue that MacIntyre is so concerned with exposing the hypocrisy of liberalism - socially embodying its particular conceptions on a large scale in flagrant violation of its claims to neutrality - that he misses the real lesson taught by the dominance of liberalism – conceptions of the good can be socially embodied on a large-scale, and that embodiment is a condition of their effectiveness, as it is of all political philosophies.

    The solution is to end the competition between virtuous communities and the state by creating the one unified political body, properly ordered to right ends, power properly arranged to their levels of competence and responsibility. Such a structure would enable the virtues generated within local communities of the common good to remoralise the whole structure from within.

    • Editora ‏ : ‎ Independently published
    • Data da publicação ‏ : ‎ 10 março 2025
    • Idioma ‏ : ‎ Inglês
    • Número de páginas ‏ : ‎ 401 páginas
    • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8313636252
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    Learning from MacIntyre, editado por Ron Beadle e Geoff Moore

     


    Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the major philosophers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. After Virtue, first published in 1981, remains the book for which he is best known but, as this volume testifies, his phenomenal output extends over a period of seven decades. Not only is his output extensive, but its impact, unusually for philosophers, has been wide-ranging. As MacIntyre enters his tenth decade, this book pays tribute not just to his work, but to the way in which it has been influential across disciplines outside of philosophy. Beginning with an intellectual biography, the chapters which follow, written by experts in their fields, explore MacIntyre's contributions to theology, Thomism, moral philosophy, classical philosophy, political philosophy, Marxism, the Frankfurt School, communication, business ethics, sociology, education, law, and therapeutic method. Essential reading for scholars from across these disciplines, and for anyone who wishes to understand MacIntyre's contributions, this volume not only helps readers to appreciate what we may learn from MacIntyre, but also indicates how his work will continue to be influential.

    Sobre o Autor

    Ron Beadle is Professor of Organisation and Business Ethics at Northumbria University, UK. His research has appeared in Business Ethics Quarterly and American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, amongst others.


    Geoff Moore is Professor of Business Ethics at Durham University Business School, UK. He is the author of     Virtue at Work: Ethics for Individuals, Managers, and Organizations (2017).

    Detalhes do produto

    • Editora ‏ : ‎ Pickwick Publications
    • Data da publicação ‏ : ‎ 30 outubro 2020
    • Idioma ‏ : ‎ Inglês
    • Número de páginas ‏ : ‎ 366 páginas
    • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1532685238
    • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1532685231
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    Normatività, tradizione e traduzione: Due saggi su Alasdair MacIntyre (Quaderni della rivista Il Pensiero Storico) (Italian Edition)

     


    Alasdair MacIntyre (Glasgow, 1929) è il pensatore che ai tempi in cui furoreggiava il postmoderno ha riproposto all’attenzione del dibattito filosofico contemporaneo il pensiero di Aristotele e di Tommaso d’Aquino, non dimenticando la lezione teologica e pratica di san Benedetto. Etica e politica trovano così una nuova fondazione. Il filosofo scozzese ha saputo fornire argomentazioni solide alla tesi secondo cui ogni comportamento etico avviene sempre all’interno di una tradizione.

    • Editora ‏ : ‎ Independently published
    • Data da publicação ‏ : ‎ 5 maio 2023
    • Idioma ‏ : ‎ Italiano
    • Número de páginas ‏ : ‎ 38 páginas
    • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8393661885
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    Study Guide: After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre

     


    Analyzing literature can be hard — we make it easy! This in-depth study guide offers summaries & analyses for all 18 chapters of After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory by Alasdair MacIntyre. Get more out of your reading experience and build confidence with study guides proven to: raise students’ grades, save teachers time, and spark dynamic book discussions. SuperSummary Study Guides are written by experienced educators and literary scholars with advanced degrees in relevant fields. Here's what's inside:

    • Chapter-by-chapter summaries— Refresh your memory of key events and big ideas
    • Comprehensive literary analysis — Unlock underlying meaning
    • Examination of key figures in the text — Follow character arcs from tragedy to triumph
    • Discussion of themes, symbols & motifs — Connect the dots among recurring ideas
    • Important quotes with explanations — Appreciate the meaning behind the words
    • Essay & discussion topics — Discover writing prompts and conversation starters 
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    Contemporary Aristotelian Ethics: Alasdair Macintyre, Martha Nussbaum, Robert Spaemann - livro de Arthur Madigan

     


    Arthur Madigan's Contemporary Aristotelian Ethics examines the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, and Robert Spaemann in the context of twentieth-century Anglo-American moral philosophy. By surveying the ways in which these three philosophers appropriate Aristotle, Madigan illustrates two important points: first, that the most pressing problems in contemporary moral philosophy can be addressed using the Aristotelian tradition and, second, that the Aristotelian tradition does not speak with one voice. Madigan demonstrates that Aristotelian moral philosophy is divided on important issues, such as the value of liberal modernity, the character and provenance of our current moral landscape, and the role of nature in Aristotle's ethics.

    Through his examination of MacIntyre, Nussbaum, and Spaemann, Madigan offers a vision for the future of Aristotelian moral philosophy, urging today's philosophers to set a clear educational agenda, to continue refining their concepts and intuitions, and to engage with new conversation partners from other philosophical traditions.



    Excerpt:


    Anglo-American moral philosophers in our period were well aware of issues about the objectivity and justification of ethical claims. These issues were central to the whole project of metaethics. Challenges to these claims went by the names of relativism, skepticism, and subjectivism. So far as I can tell, there was no general agreement about how these challenges should be met.

    Frankena's distinction of three kinds of relativism is perspicuous. The first of these is descriptive relativism, of which the best-known form is cultural relativism. This is the claim, in effect a thesis in sociology or anthropology, that different groups of people, different cultures, have substantively different ethics, i.e., they recognize different things as good or bad, different things as obligatory or forbidden. At a certain level this is clearly true. What is disputed is how fundamental these differences are and what they do or do not entail for normative ethics.

    The second type of relativism is normative relativism. Normative relativism asserts that different cultures should act on their different ethical beliefs or principles. Where descriptive relativism says that people in culture X and people in culture Y have and act on different ethical principles, normative relativism says that it is right for people in culture X to act on their ethical principles and right for people in culture Y to act on their different ethical principles. The Romans are right to do as the Romans do. If, for example, a certain culture regards the claims of honesty as taking precedence over the claims of family loyalty, then people in that culture ought to give precedence to the claims of honesty. But if a certain other culture regards family loyalty as taking precedence over honesty, then people in that culture ought to give precedence to the claims of family loyalty.

    The third type of relativism is metaethical relativism. This is the view that there is no objective rational way of justifying ethical claims, and so, that different, even contradictory, ethical claims are equally justified, or rather equally unjustified. This would seem to be close to, if not identical with, ethical skepticism, which we will take up in a moment.

    Some people have blurred the lines between descriptive or cultural relativism on the one hand and normative and metaethical relativism on the other, or even appealed to cultural relativism in support of normative or metaethical relativism. Moral philosophers in our period tend to criticize those appeals as fallacious. The differences between cultures, even if they go very deep, are not sufficient to establish that either normative or metaethical relativism is true.

    Introductions to ethics in our period did not agree about how to describe the challenges of relativism and skepticism, much less about how to meet them. Ewing discusses skepticism on pp. 26-27, 98, and 110-11 of his Ethics and then gives pp. 111-15 to cultural relativism. He also discusses what he calls the subjective view of ethics on pp. 26-27 and 156-57. Harman, whose index includes only proper names, has no discussion of skepticism or relativism, but his chapter 3 is entitled "Emotivism as Moderate Nihilism." Raphael has no index entries for skepticism or for relativism but does have a couple of entries for subjectivism. Rachels has no entries for skepticism or for relativism, but his second chapter is concerned with cultural relativism and his third chapter with subjectivism. Frankena does not discuss skepticism as such, presumably because he thinks his discussion of metaethical relativism says what needs to be said about it. Readers who look up "Ethical Skepticism" in Paul Edwards's Encyclopedia of Philosophy will be referred to "Emotive Theory of Ethics," "Ethical Relativism," and "Ethical Subjectivism."

    Philosophers in our period apparently recognized that issues about the objectivity and justification of ethical claims were too complex and difficult to be treated, on anything beyond the simplest level, in introductions to ethics. On a higher or more technical level there was no general agreement about how these issues should best be treated. In this situation I would suggest that we draw a rough and ready distinction between two different contexts in which problems of objectivity, justification, relativism, skepticism, and subjectivism come up for discussion. The first context is theoretical: the continuing effort to come to terms with the legacies of Moore, Prichard, Ross, Ayer, Stevenson, Hare, and the heirs to their arguments. The second context is more obviously practical, not to say existential: addressing requests to justify particular claims about duties and obligations, or trying to answer the general question "Why should I be moral?"

    (excerpted from chapter 1)



    • Editora ‏ : ‎ University of Notre Dame Press
    • Data da publicação ‏ : ‎ 15 janeiro 2026
    • Idioma ‏ : ‎ Inglês
    • Número de páginas ‏ : ‎ 284 páginas
    • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0268207607
    • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0268207601

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    Alasdair Macintyre's Engagement with Marxism: Selected Writings 1953-1974 - Coletânea organizada por Paul Blackledge

     


    Although Alasdair MacIntyre is best known today as the author of After Virtue (1981), he was, in the 1950s and 1960s, one of the most erudite members of Britain's Marxist Left: being a militant within, first, the Communist Party, then the New Left, and finally the heterodox Trotskyist International Socialism group. This selection of his essays on Marxism from that period aims to show that his youthful thought profoundly informed his mature ethics, and that, in the wake of the collapse of the state-capitalist regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe, the powerful and optimistic revolutionary Marxist ethics of liberation he articulated in that period is arguably as salient to anti-capitalist activists today as it was half a century ago.

    Paul Blackledge, D/Phil (1999) York, is the author of Perry Anderson, Marxism and the New Left (2004) and Reflections on the Marxist Theory of History (2006).
    Neil Davidson is the author of The Origins of Scottish Nationhood (2000) and the Deutscher Prize winning Discovering the Scottish Revolution (2003).


    • Editora ‏ : ‎ Haymarket Books
    • Data da publicação ‏ : ‎ 1 setembro 2009
    • Idioma ‏ : ‎ Inglês
    • Número de páginas ‏ : ‎ 448 páginas
    • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1608460320
    • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1608460328
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    Nova coletânea de artigos de Alasdair MacIntyre, editada por Kelvin Knight e Peter Wicks, traz o essencial do filósofo escocês


     

    This vital collection showcases the trajectory of MacIntyre's thought and the perennial significance of his work.

    One of the world's foremost philosophers for over half a century, Alasdair MacIntyre stands at the forefront of the revival of Aristotelianism in contemporary thought. Alasdair MacIntyre on Practical Philosophy serves as an accessible introduction to MacIntyre's work while also providing a clear sense of how he continued to develop and refine his philosophy after the publication of After Virtue. This essential reader includes some of his most important works on ethics and politics, including unpublished pieces from his Common Goods and Political Reasoning project.

    Focusing on the period between After Virtue and MacIntyre's final masterpiece, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, the collection shows how he came to understand Aristotelianism not merely as a rival to consequentialist and deontological ethical theories, but as a distinctive account of ethical inquiry, one which can illuminate both the sources of our contemporary moral disputes and the conditions under which true moral progress can be made. Alasdair MacIntyre on Practical Philosophy also reveals how MacIntyre found vital resources for understanding and criticizing the irrationalities and injustices of contemporary society and politics in the Aristotelian tradition.


    • Editora ‏ : ‎ University of Notre Dame Press
    • Data da publicação ‏ : ‎ 1 março 2026
    • Idioma ‏ : ‎ Inglês
    • Número de páginas ‏ : ‎ 450 páginas
    • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0268210551
    • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0268210557

    Excerpt:

    There is not much enthusiasm abroad among intellectuals in our time for the day when the last king will be strangled with the entrails of the last priest. It is not just that the liberation of mankind has come to seem an impossibly Utopian enterprise. To most present-day British intellectuals the very concept of commitment to such a cause has become suspect. They are on the whole content with what they have; if they want anything else, it is more of the same sort of thing that they have already. An American sociologist has written of them that “never has an intellectual class found its society and its culture so much to its satisfaction,” and has pictured our university teachers in a state of complacent delight, drinking port and reading Jane Austen. Remember the Spitalfield silk-weavers of the 1840s spending their Sunday leisure drinking porter and reading Tom Paine and you have a clue to how far and in what direction our society has travelled. The great-great-grandsons of the Spitalfield weavers are competing for scholarships to sit at the feet of the port-drinkers; their great-great-granddaughters are keen readers of those women’s magazines in which the blue-eyed, fair-haired, six-foot-tall hero is increasingly likely to turn out to be an academic of some sort.

    The sweet smell of the academic’s social success helps to explain his unease when presented with images of radical change. He does not seek to be in any sense a prophet of hope; indeed the very notion seems to him pretentious and vulgar. Those prophets of hope, the great Marxist intellectuals, are treated as the authors of antique texts for commentary and refutation; the idea of “Left intellectuals” is such that when that glittering reflection of the contemporary intellectual scene, Mr. Anthony Crosland, wants to speak of them he has to guard himself by the qualification “if one may use the awful phrase.” Small wonder then that when the contemporary intellectual’s preoccupations are translated into terms of imaginative vision, he appears as one without hope. The repeated assurance of Mr. Butler that we can double our standard of living in the next twenty-five years if we only refrain from rocking the boat sounds very thin and unconvincing compared to the threats of what may happen to us if we don’t. The increase in human powers which once seemed the very root of hope is now far more often a source of dread. The fantasies of Orwell, who was obsessed by the danger of the techniques of power getting into the hands of men of bad will, have only been outdone by the fantasies of Huxley, who sees just as dire consequences in the possibility of them getting into the hands of men of good will.

    Yet fantasy here as always reflects life. If the intellectual has nightmares of a conformist future, he has only to wake up to find himself in a conformist present with the intellectuals conforming as hard as anyone else. The writers elevate Western values in Encounter. The scientists play their part at Harwell, Aldermaston and Porton. The teachers and the journalists purvey second-hand versions of the dominant ideas. It is in this conformist culture that power has become a means not to possibility but to a destruction of all possibility. That comparatively primitive technology which took us from gas-light to gas-chambers has been replaced by the achievement which took us from the disintegration of the atomic nucleus to the disintegration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Intellectual achievement hovers between the imagination and the reality of destruction.

    It was not always so. We inherit from other times and places a series of images of the intellectual as rebel and critic: Condorcet, hiding from his executioners so that he may finish his Sketch of the Progress of the Human Race; Marx in the Reading Room at the British Museum, surviving on a pittance; Sartre playing his part in the Resistance. On the threshold of our society the intellectual appeared as liberator and revolutionary. But both before and after that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century stimulus to reason the intellectual has too often been a victim of the bureaucracies of the mind. Before there were those corporations of learning, the universities, providing a vital link between the powers of church and state. Since there have been the growing administrative tasks of industry and the civil service on the one hand, with the diffusion of ideas on the other through Press, television and schools, the universities once more providing an important link. Between the collapse of the older order and the rise of the new the intellectual achieved a short-lived independence during which he appeared as a voice of hope, speaking to men who might hear.

    It is a mark of the conformism of contemporary intellectuals that not only do they not see themselves as able to speak in this way, but they are no longer able to conceive of there being an audience which might hear and respond. One component of the apathy of the intellectuals is a deep-seated belief in the apathy and conformism of the working class. Yet an addiction to I.T.V. is perhaps no more likely to reduce one to being an impotent spectator of life than is an habitual reading of The Times or the Guardian. The grooves of conformism are different for different social groups. What unites all those who live within them is that their lives are shaped and driven forward by events and decisions which are not of their own making. A lack of will to change this situation and an inability even to recognise it fully infect all classes in our society.

    Where intellectuals are specifically concerned, an explanation may be looked for in terms of the specialisation of thought. The formal logician, the prehistorian, the neurologist and the poet all count as intellectuals: why should they have anything to say of outstanding social significance? Should this not be the province of yet another specialist, the sociologist or the political theorist? Part of the answer to this ought to start from the way in which what the sociologists and political theorists have to say today often seems as devoid of immediate political significance as the study of butterflies or Buddhism. But the core of the answer lies in the change in the characteristics of the intellectual. Among our intellectual ancestors, the thinkers of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and their immediate heirs, it was taken for granted that to participate in intellectual life at all was to be committed to the ideas of reason and freedom and to the politics that could make these effective. What we have to ask about the intellectuals is not just what social pressures have driven them into their present unhappy state; but what has happened to emasculate their ideas and what in our culture has robbed the intellect of its social power. To ask this is not of course to ask a question that is only relevant to intellectuals; it is to ask what hinders intellectuals from contributing to a general break-through from apathy.

    (excerpted from chapter 10)


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