I am a little sceptical of Catholic philosophers lauding the good old days (forgive me, I’ve been reading a fair bit of Post-Liberalism recently and certain phrases have become triggering - “virtue”, “human flourishing”, “the common good”, “Aristotelian-Thomism”).
My impression is that human beings are wonderful at inventing self-justifications and always have been. The fact that the Bible is a collection of loosely-related texts by multiple authors makes it an awesome source of justification for all kinds of things (from giving to the poor to murdering large numbers of people).
Thanks — I suspect I'm with you. I don't put Alasdair MacIntyre into the category you were citing. I quite liked Deneen's book why liberalism failed but his instinctive right tribalism and subsequent book put me off him. I can't imaging MacIntyre falling for anything so self-serving.
On Renée Leon, I've added a brief postscript.
https://nicholasgruen.substack.com/i/148606906/postscript
I am a little sceptical of Catholic philosophers lauding the good old days (forgive me, I’ve been reading a fair bit of Post-Liberalism recently and certain phrases have become triggering - “virtue”, “human flourishing”, “the common good”, “Aristotelian-Thomism”).
My impression is that human beings are wonderful at inventing self-justifications and always have been. The fact that the Bible is a collection of loosely-related texts by multiple authors makes it an awesome source of justification for all kinds of things (from giving to the poor to murdering large numbers of people).
My own thoughts on moral self justification: https://tempo.substack.com/p/are-we-the-baddies
Thanks — I suspect I'm with you. I don't put Alasdair MacIntyre into the category you were citing. I quite liked Deneen's book why liberalism failed but his instinctive right tribalism and subsequent book put me off him. I can't imaging MacIntyre falling for anything so self-serving.
I concur. While I don’t agree with MacIntyre, he is a subtle thinker in a way that most of the PLs are not.