Introduction

Few works of modern philosophy have created the lasting stir caused by Alasdair MacIntyre’s 1981 volume, After Virtue. MacIntyre’s views, largely Aristotelian in nature, tend to reject the paths of the Enlightenment movements, and the author most emphatically points to Nietzsche as the inevitable, and hopelessly misguided, culmination of Enlightenment thought and philosophy.

More notably, and perhaps less reasonably, After Virtue gained prominence for one aspect of MacIntyre’s thinking. He dismisses as nonsensical any conception of human rights as being integral to the nature of man or being: “For McIntyre, ‘natural or human rights are fictions’, inventions of modern individualism, and should be discarded” (Douzinas 14). Nor does MacIntyre equivocate, and he goes so far as to compare a belief in natural human rights  as absurd as a belief in unicorns.

It is certainly arguable that the timing of the appearance of MacIntyre’s philosophy had a good deal to do with its controversial status. The last decades of the twentieth century were marked by an intense interest in human rights, and one that seems to have taken for granted a shared, worldwide ideology regarding the basic inviolability of such rights. MacIntyre, moreover, was not alone in decrying this embracing of the concept.  Among others, Bauman perceived that the political aspect to human rights issues, or at least how those issues could be politicized, had gone far in substantiating what was essentially not a philosophy, but something of an ideological implement: “Zygmunt Bauman asserts that human rights have become a ‘war cry and blackmail weapon in the hands of aspiring “community leaders” wishing to pick up powers that the state has dropped’” (Twining 175).

All this notwithstanding, MacIntyre’s assertions must be viewed in a manner distinct from either their pervasive cynicism or modern relevance. He utterly refutes the concept of natural human rights, and in order to properly challenge these views it is necessary to examine the innate relations between human virtues and human rights. This in turn relies upon satisfactory definitions of the terms themselves, as each may be vastly subject to interpretation.

Ultimately, MacIntyre’s philosophy on the non-existence of natural human rights cannot be sustained because virtually every definition of virtue reflects a consideration for basic human rights. MacIntyre never takes his thinking far enough away from a somewhat topical definition of human rights to grasp that they intrinsically express, and in turn serve to create, virtue. Human rights and human virtues are inextricable elements. MacIntyre may not have the latter, to which he does subscribe in an Aristotelian manner, without the former..

In Support of MacIntyre

Before contesting MacIntyre’s views, it is necessary to credit some of the rationale behind them. Aside from his authentic and careful scholarship, there are substantially valid motivations for his thinking. Moreover, in so validating him, a foundation for an argument against his negation of human rights is actually abetted.

As noted, it is difficult to separate the precepts of After Virtue from its place in modern history.

This factor not only shades the way in which MacIntyre’s thoughts are taken in, but seems to be a profound an influence upon them.  As the historical strata of Western societies was an impetus to the birth of the Age of Enlightenment, modern concerns dictated MacIntyre’s stance.  Voltaire, Rousseau, and Kant devised philosophical thought in reaction to unacceptable modes long in existence and held as absolute, and MacIntyre proceeded in the same, reactive fashion: “The central contention of After Virtue, in fact, is that we have a fragmented and incoherent conception of morality, which we have nonetheless succeeded in living with for a considerable period of time” (Murphy 23).

MacIntyre’s dismissal of natural human rights is simply a response to modern, popular ideologies.  He most certainly witnessed a politicizing of a concept that must have struck him as highly unnatural, and which consequently fueled a profound suspicion for the concept itself. With no true understanding or shared definition in place, the world of the late twentieth century was ceaselessly championing a vague concept of human rights as a natural privilege, one to be respected and maintained within any regime or nation. This was what defined the term, and this in itself was also largely reactive; the authorities of governments aside, all human beings had a naturally bestowed right to not be tortured, not be imprisoned for protest, and not be constrained to accept any political dominion.

It is therefore at least partially correct for a philosopher to rebel against so ill-defined and vague a general proposition. It does indeed beg the question: who and/or what has ever established these inviolable human rights? It is, in fact, rather easy to propose that the concept of natural human rights is a convenient and self-congratulatory notion.

Rights and Virtues

The error MacIntyre makes is in assessing human rights as apart from human virtue. This, too, is a comprehensible course, but it serves to eviscerate any meaning of human rights by its sheer removal of the essential basis for them. Then, MacIntyre’s reliance on Aristotelian teleology is too influential in his perception of virtue, which of course goes to his ultimate dismissal of human rights.