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Title: A Short History of Ethics: A History of Moral Philosophy from the Homeric Age to the Twentieth Century by Alasdair MacIntyre ISBN: 0-268-01759-X Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.00

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Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (3 reviews)

Rating: 3
Summary: Serious shortcomings
Comment: Professor MacIntyre's book is in some respects fine, in other respects terrible. The good thing is that he offers valuable insights and arguments for an historical approach to the analysis of moral judgments. He covers a large area, and has at times pointly summaries. The bad thing is that his text is poorly structured, and at times has a poor content. He frequently announces arguments that he does not work out, and he sets out lines that end in the mist. This fact is the more irritating, because, apart from a the chapter division, the lay-out completely lacks structure. Moreover, he seems rather biassed against (protestant) christian ethics, and tries to understand it apart from a notion so fundamental as creation. As a result, he misses the opportunity to understand both the revelational aspects of creation and the rational aspects of revelation. Not surprisingly, he cannot bridge the gap between rationality and revelation, and he ends up soon with an evaluation that is coloured by words like 'irrational', and 'arbitrary', leaving the reader with a seriously flawed picture of a important factor in contemporary ethics.

Rating: 4
Summary: Good book for the prepared reader
Comment: This is a reissue of a 1964 work. MacIntyre provides a new introduction that critically reviews what he sees as the strength and weaknesses of the book. The book itself, however, is unchanged from the 1964 text.

Beginners will find this a difficult book to work through. MacIntyre presumes the reader has a basic understanding of the ideas and philosophers he discusses.

But for those with adequate background this is a wonderful book, full of many insights. Be warned, though, this book is not a neutral review of the subject matter. In this book MacIntyre lays the groundwork for his own particular version of ethics (developed most fully in After Virtue).

Much of the book is dense and part of it is, arguably, poorly written. But it is worth the work needed to get through it.

Rating: 4
Summary: A patchy historical survey of the currents of moral thought.
Comment: This book is the precursor to Professor MacIntyre's groundbreaking, if flawed, text on moral theory, 'After Virtue' (see my review). The great advantage of this work is that MacIntyre had not by then explicitly developed his dubious answers to the fascinating questions posed by this volume. The stongest part of the book is that which deals with our difficulty in understanding other cultures, when we can not make sense of their ethics. Here his theories about the warrior-ethic of the Homeric era are fascinating and cast a new light on the problems of translation. How this ethic collapsed after the material conditions supporting it vanished, and how it was in part repaired and in part replaced in the Socratic era is equally intriguing. The weakness with this work is on the later philosophers, especially Machiavelli, Kant and, sadly, Nietzsche, who was the most insightful thinker in MacIntyre's field (the genealogy of morals). He tries to cover too much ground too quickly, and gives too much weight to sociological explanation of problems which are intrinsically logical. However, this is still a formidable work by a philosopher of just renown.

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