Every so often, an article appears in the national press announcing the death of the university. A recent example in The Telegraph linked the possible demise of universities to the disruptive effects of AI on assessment and coursework. More broadly, the causes usually cited vary: financial instability, student debt, dependence on international recruitment, loss of …
I enjoy reading lists of virtues and was particularly interested to find that Nigel Biggar has recently published a list of virtues for academics, which he terms nine intellectual virtues. These are: temperance respect carefulness patience charity, or generosity humility docility or teachableness thoughtfulness courage Biggar is right to question whether universities can remain ‘eloquent …
In the preface (p. xi) to Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (1999), Alasdair MacIntyre refers to a prayer by Thomas Aquinas ‘in which he asks God to grant that he may happily share with those in need what he has, while humbly asking for what he needs from those who have’. …
In Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, MacIntyre writes that any answer to the question what are universities for? should begin with this: They are, when they are true to their own vocation, institutions within which questions of the form ‘What are x’s for?’ and ‘What peculiar goods do y’s serve?’ are formulated and answered …
McInerny, R. (1997) Ethica Thomistica: The Moral Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Revised edition. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. Chapter 1: Morality and Human Life 1. Human Action and Moral Appraisal Human actions are moral actions. A human act is one that is conscious, deliberate, and free, and therefore something for which the …
Patient: Do you think I have low self-esteem? Therapist: No, it’s about right. How do we know whether our own evaluation of ourselves, and of our lives as a whole, is accurate or justified? How can we tell if we’re genuinely living a good life? MacIntyre (2016, p. 222) makes the bold claim that at …
A day after submitting my blog post (The Good Life of the University) to the Teaching Matters blog team, I happened on an interview (2012) with MacIntyre in which reference is made to an essay of his (Catholic Universities: Dangers, Hopes, Choices) which appeared in an edited book called Higher Learning and Catholic Traditions (2001). …
Alasdair MacIntyre (2001) ‘Catholic Universities: Dangers, Hopes, Choices’, in Robert E. Sullivan (ed.) Higher Learning and Catholic Traditions. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 1–21. While the essay is most obviously about Catholic universities, MacIntyre makes clear that all universities can learn from some of the Catholic writers who have written about …
Alasdair MacIntyre (2006). The end of education: the fragmentation of the American university. Commonweal, 133: 18. In this short article about the American Catholic university, MacIntyre makes several claims about both Catholic and secular institutions in the USA. Perhaps the most provocative is in the opening statement: from a Catholic point of view, the contemporary secular …
