Title: The Believer and the Emotivist Culture of MacIntyreSay no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Author: Katherine Perry Date Written: February 22, 2006 Words: 2,085 In his book After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre argues that members of contemporary society live in a world lacking a definitively objective moral foundation, a world which he calls an “emotivist culture”. This essay will first define what specific characteristics, according to MacIntyre, are involved in such a culture. Second, it will explain and elucidate the author's argument that the current state of the world reflects this emotivist culture. Finally, we will present an argument refuting MacIntyre's view because his list of emotivist social figures lacks a key non-emotivist player: the believer, or an individual who bases his or her belief on a divine moral code. Before diving into an explanation of MacIntyre's vision. In an emotivist culture, it is both important and necessary to define emotivism as a moral philosophy. A theory of moral judgments based on emotion, emotivism claims that the evaluation of values ​​can only be understood in terms of emotional meaning or on the basis of personal and individual realities. MacIntyre describes the theory as follows: "Emotivism is the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and especially judgments are nothing other than expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling, insofar as they are of a moral or evaluative character. ” (MacIntyre 10) In his argument, MacIntyre asserts that emotivism fails as a theory of meaning but succeeds as a theory of use. To clarify, the statement “Capital punishment is wrong,” as a theory of meaning, could be translated as “Capital punishment – ​​boo.” As a theory of use, this same statement would have persuasive or rhetorical effects in order to garner support for the cause of perhaps ending capital punishment. By combining MacIntyre's account of emotivism with the concept of culture, or a particular society at a particular time and today, it is possible to explain what the characteristics of emotivist culture are today. The author paints a somewhat pessimistic portrait of the modern world, which would certainly shock and disturb the average human being. In the emotivist culture infamously described by MacIntyre, value judgments (or assessments of the universal right or wrong of certain actions) are nothing more than the expression of preferences, attitudes, or feelings. Morality has no universal, primordial or objective basis. Rather, moral choices are inherently arbitrary and are therefore at the mercy of the individual mind. Just like having a favorite color, morality is a matter of taste and is only a matter of opinion. To reinforce his description of current culture as being heavily based on emotivist theory, MacIntyre highlights its particularity compared to past societies. He alludes to past thinkers, Nietzsche and Sartre, to contrast the "very different moral philosophies in Germany and France" with contemporary emotivist cultures. In the past, the emotivist theories proposed by these thinkers were unconventional and eccentric, but MacIntyre asserts that such theories dominate current culture. It dwells on the omnipresence of these ideals in today's society and explains how they form a set of consensual beliefs based on emotivism. MacIntyre highlights the centrality of emotivist thoughtin contemporary culture in the following passage: "One way of putting my claim that morality is no longer what it once was is simply to say that to a large extent people do not think, do not speak and do not act as if emotivism were a reality. true, whatever their avowed theoretical point of view. Emotivism is embodied in our culture (22). In his description and differentiation of the emotivist culture of past societies, MacIntyre makes two bold claims. First, he asserts that morality is no longer what it was before the moral apocalypse. Second, and more importantly, it says that what once was morality has disappeared. MacIntyre calls this “a grave cultural loss” and arrives at such a shocking and novel claim – that today's society is in fact an emotivist culture – by constructing a proof of the reasoning behind his belief. The argument is valid, insofar as its conclusion follows logically from its previous premises. MacIntyre's argument for his theory of emotivist culture is outlined and summarized below: Premise 1: Emotivism, as a moral philosophy, involves a sociology, or study of social interactions between individuals. Premise 2: Sociology implies the presence of certain characters who embody the specific and revealing social roles of a given society: the characters of today's culture are intrinsically emotivist. Conclusion: The social roles of a society constitute its culture; social roles based on an emotivist logic reveal the presence of an emotivist culture. Taking each statement separately, the explanation of MacIntyre's argument begins with the premise that all moral philosophies require a sociology or study of social interactions. Because emotivism is categorically considered a moral philosophy, the author claims that it also presupposes a sociology. For every moral philosophy explicitly or implicitly offers at least a partial conceptual analysis of an agent's relationship to her reasons, motivations, intentions, and actions, and in doing so usually presupposes some claim that these concepts are embodied or at least can be in the real social world (23). The second premise has two parts: a general statement and a specific application of this statement to contemporary society. MacIntyre says that sociology involves the presence of certain characters who embody particular social roles indicating the nature of a society. MacIntyre says that the characters are “masks worn by moral philosophers” who “embody moral beliefs, doctrines, and theories” (28). Characters also encompass both the sociological expectations and psychological wishes of individuals, and therefore “a morally legitimate mode of social existence” (29). Regarding today's social context, MacIntyre asserts that three characters in particular embody the essence of culture: the aesthete, the manager, and the therapist. All are rooted in emotivism, MacIntyre says, because each represents "the erasure of the distinction between manipulative and non-manipulative social relations" (23). MacIntyre describes the aesthete as an individual who exists and flourishes in "environments in which the problem of pleasure arises in the context of leisure" (25). For the aesthete, the social world is a mere arena for the pursuit and ultimate satisfaction of his own desires – a goal he will strive to achieve even to the personal detriment of others. MacIntyre's second character, the manager, is the human embodiment of bureaucratic rationality, orof “rationality which consists of matching means to ends in an economical and efficient manner” (25). For the manager, it is the effectiveness (and not the moral goal) of a task that is valued. The therapist completes MacIntyre's trio of contemporary social characters and describes a valueless, nonjudgmental individual, concerned only with efficiency and technique to "transform maladaptive individuals into well-adjusted individuals" (29). Just as a manager represents an obliteration of the distinction between manipulative and non-manipulative social relationships, so too does the therapist represent this ambiguity “in the sphere of personal life” (29). Similar to the second premise, the conclusion of the argument also includes broad and specific components. MacIntyre argues that the social roles of a given society – as embodied by its main characters – define its culture or way of life. Furthermore, social roles based on emotivist logic necessarily reflect an emotivist culture and “provide a culture with its moral definitions” (31). Although in theory MacIntyre's claim about contemporary culture seems plausible, closer observation of the practices of members of modern society indicates that something is amiss in the argument, primarily with regard to the list of main characters. The list is incomplete. MacIntyre's three characters are appropriate because they correctly reflect the values ​​and virtues of contemporary culture; However, to the aesthete, the manager and the therapist, we must add a fourth character: the believer. The refutation of MacIntyre's argument can be presented as follows: Premise 1: If culture is emotivist in nature, its "stock characters" or social roles must embody and reflect these same emotivist values. Premise 2: Not all social roles embody or reflect emotivist values. .Conclusion: Therefore, culture cannot be considered truly emotivist. In MacIntyre's second premise, he asserts that a certain sociology involves the presence of certain characters who embody the specific and revelatory social roles of a given society, and that furthermore, the characters in today's culture are inherently emotivist. MacIntyre defines a character as "a very particular type of social role that imposes a certain type of moral constraint on the personality of those who inhabit it, in a way that many other social roles do not" (27). The place of the believer among the list of social figures “immediately recognizable by the public” is crucial because of his omnipresence and his influence in contemporary society. For MacIntyre, characters are “moral representatives of culture” and “express moral convictions in their actions” (28). The believer certainly meets this criterion. A 2001 study by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York found that in the United States, 85 percent of the population is affiliated with a particular religious sect, and nearly 80 percent of that total belongs to one form or another. of the Christian Church. Similarly, a 2001 Gallup poll found that 41 percent of Americans attend church regularly. Although a significant portion of this percentage does not actually attend services, the mere fact that individuals lie about their participation in religious activities indicates the extent to which people strive to embody and personify the character of the believer . The believer is not only involved in the sociological context. layers of culture – it is also anchored in its foundations and in its governmental aspects. The First Amendment to the Constitution.