In chapter 3 of Whose Justice, Which Rationality, MacIntyre argues that post-Homeric Greek society inherited two different types of goods.
Goods of excellence are achieved through the cultivation and exercise of the virtues. They are connected with what it means to excel as a human being and as a citizen.
Goods of effectiveness are goods such as wealth, power, military success, and political influence – goods that enable individuals or groups to achieve their aims in the world.
The polis provided a social and political framework within which citizens could pursue both kinds of goods. However, tensions arose because these goods could point in different directions.
As a result, different conceptions of justice emerged. If justice is understood primarily in relation to goods of excellence, it concerns giving people what they deserve according to virtue, merit, and contribution to the common life of the polis. If justice is understood primarily in relation to goods of effectiveness, it concerns the distribution and acquisition of power, advantage, resources, and success.
Interestingly, MacIntyre argues that injustice affects these two kinds of goods differently. Injustice in relation to goods of excellence primarily harms the agent, since excellence can only be achieved by meeting the relevant standards of virtue and achievement. Those who seek shortcuts or manipulate the standards may gain rewards, but they deprive themselves of the excellence they aim at. By contrast, injustice in relation to goods of effectiveness typically harms others, since goods such as wealth, power, and status are often scarce and their unjust acquisition disadvantages those who are denied them.
MacIntyre’s point is that disagreement about justice reflects deeper disagreement about which goods are most important. Different rankings of goods generate different standards of justice.
The same applies to other virtues. Courage, for example, can be understood either as a virtue ordered towards excellence and the common good, or as a quality valued because it helps secure effectiveness, success, victory, or power. The meaning and role of a virtue therefore depends upon the wider conception of goods within which it is situated.
Thinking about this in relation to institutions, and particularly to the modern university, is revealing. MacIntyre acknowledges both in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? and in After Virtue that institutions are necessary for the achievement of goods of excellence. In After Virtue, they provide the social and material support without which practices could not survive. Yet institutions are also characteristically concerned with goods of effectiveness: resources, status, influence, reputation, recruitment, and financial viability. Consequently, there is always a danger that the pursuit of such goods will distort the practices they are meant to sustain.
The modern university exemplifies this tension. It is an institution that houses a range of intellectual practices – disciplines, in effect – each with its own standards of excellence and forms of achievement. One of the university’s central purposes should be to provide the conditions in which those disciplines can flourish according to their own intellectual standards.
Yet contemporary universities often appear to privilege goods of effectiveness over goods of excellence. Success comes to be measured through grades, rankings, credentials, employability, and other externally recognised indicators of achievement. To be sure, genuine excellence is often reflected in such measures. Nonetheless, where assessment becomes pervasive and the consequences of poor performance are high, students can easily become oriented primarily towards securing external rewards rather than towards the patient acquisition of disciplinary standards.
A stronger emphasis on goods of excellence would encourage a more apprenticeship-like conception of higher education. Errors and failures would still matter, but they would be treated primarily as opportunities for learning rather than as costly defeats in a competition for credentials. Such an approach requires time, patience, and sustained engagement. It values immersion in the texts, questions, methods, and standards of a discipline over the rapid completion of assessed tasks. The educational aim becomes not merely successful performance, but initiation into standards of intellectual excellence.
References
Alasdair MacIntyre. 1985. After Virtue: a study in moral theory. Second Edition. London: Duckworth.
Alasdair MacIntyre. 1988. Whose Justice, Which Rationality. London: Duckworth.
(Jan Vermeer: The Art of Painting)
