Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues

Where should an account of the virtues begin? In Dependent Rational Animals, Alasdair MacIntyre argues that we should begin with those facts of vulnerability and disability, and of consequent dependence on others, to which moral philosophers have generally given insufficient attention, and with the animal nature of human beings - that which exhibits their kinship to members of other intelligent species. He argues that it is by reference to these that we become able to understand the part played in our lives both by the virtues of independent practical reasoning and by the virtues of an acknowledged dependence on others.