Macintyre’s Tensions: between anti-liberal foundationalism and antifoundationalist liberalism

Abstract

This paper argues through a close reading of Alasdair Macintyre’s works on justice and rationality that his reflections on the matter, despite their initial anti-liberal and foundationalist intent, have led him to endorse something close to an anti-foundationalist liberal position like that emerging from the works of neo-pragmatists philosophers such Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam and John Rawls. This is a position that regards rationality as internal to traditions, without taking this as a reason for thinking that we are irrationally trapped within the boundaries traced by the norms and standards of our own traditions. Instead, it regards us as able to transcend those boundaries through a conversational and fallibilistic use of reason, which makes us ready to revise our conceptual and evaluative horizons through open confrontation with other traditions. In order to illustrate this contention, the paper will have to disentangle the irresolvable and overlapping tensions between foundationalist and anti-foundationalist inclinations, and between anti-liberal and liberal ones, that deeply permeate his thought.