MacIntyre advances the notion that the moral structures that emerged from the Enlightenment were philosophically doomed from the start.
I heard this also from my learning partner. I think he heard it from his father. The idea is that once the pursuit of pleasure is legitimized then the USA is just going on the natural path that that leads to.
Allen Bloom also thought the Enlightenment project had reached a crisis point in the USA. [In catastrophe theory that would be considered a cusp in which one can jump up or fall down but can't continue in the same path because the manifold stops there. [To jump up the USA would have to return to Judeo-Christian values and get rid of the terrorists.] I can't draw a picture of this but the idea is you have a critical point which has several points where it can veer off to. And sometimes there is no path at all but because of the momentum one is forced to a jump point. Allen Bloom thought the USA had come to such a point. He did not put it in that way but if he had known catastrophe theory I think he would have.
MacIntyre went to Aristotle and Catholicism and Thomism. That would not be my answer. But my answer would not be far away. But my focus would be Maimonides
This is not so far from MacIntyre.
In theory I found a few difficulties with the Catholic approach that I think Aquinas did not deal with satisfactorily. Same goes with Aristotle. Besides that I saw in my parents who were Reform Jews an amazing level of Menschlichkeit [human decency] that would indicate to me that the Jewish approach was a better alternative (with certain limitations.)
["Reform" but with belief in the Oral and Written Law unlike official Reform doctrine. Probably Conservative would be a better description.]
I might have mentioned this before but I saw a problem in Aristotle's Metaphysics that seemed unanswerable to me. And many other thinkers seemed to have problems. I cant even begin to name them all. Concern for the moral implications of any social theory is also important to me. And the Kant approach where moral autonomy is central makes a lot more sense to me than system where discipline is imposed on people from some outside authority. It is the most comprehensive and logically rigorous system since Aristotle. I am a bit shocked that people in the west are not aware of it while in the USSR this school of thought was well known--(if only because it was a direct attack on Communism). But at least they did not ignore it.
My approach would be to make schools based on the Rambam idea of learning the written Law [Bible] the Oral Law [the Mishne Torah of the Rambam], Physics [String Theory], MetaPhysics {Plato, Aristotle, Kant.}
I heard this also from my learning partner. I think he heard it from his father. The idea is that once the pursuit of pleasure is legitimized then the USA is just going on the natural path that that leads to.
Allen Bloom also thought the Enlightenment project had reached a crisis point in the USA. [In catastrophe theory that would be considered a cusp in which one can jump up or fall down but can't continue in the same path because the manifold stops there. [To jump up the USA would have to return to Judeo-Christian values and get rid of the terrorists.] I can't draw a picture of this but the idea is you have a critical point which has several points where it can veer off to. And sometimes there is no path at all but because of the momentum one is forced to a jump point. Allen Bloom thought the USA had come to such a point. He did not put it in that way but if he had known catastrophe theory I think he would have.
MacIntyre went to Aristotle and Catholicism and Thomism. That would not be my answer. But my answer would not be far away. But my focus would be Maimonides
This is not so far from MacIntyre.
In theory I found a few difficulties with the Catholic approach that I think Aquinas did not deal with satisfactorily. Same goes with Aristotle. Besides that I saw in my parents who were Reform Jews an amazing level of Menschlichkeit [human decency] that would indicate to me that the Jewish approach was a better alternative (with certain limitations.)
["Reform" but with belief in the Oral and Written Law unlike official Reform doctrine. Probably Conservative would be a better description.]
I might have mentioned this before but I saw a problem in Aristotle's Metaphysics that seemed unanswerable to me. And many other thinkers seemed to have problems. I cant even begin to name them all. Concern for the moral implications of any social theory is also important to me. And the Kant approach where moral autonomy is central makes a lot more sense to me than system where discipline is imposed on people from some outside authority. It is the most comprehensive and logically rigorous system since Aristotle. I am a bit shocked that people in the west are not aware of it while in the USSR this school of thought was well known--(if only because it was a direct attack on Communism). But at least they did not ignore it.
My approach would be to make schools based on the Rambam idea of learning the written Law [Bible] the Oral Law [the Mishne Torah of the Rambam], Physics [String Theory], MetaPhysics {Plato, Aristotle, Kant.}
