The death of Alasdair MacIntyre, one of the great moral philosophers of the twentieth century, whose rediscovery of Aristotleian anthropology and ethics showed a way out of the moral wilderness of the contemporary world, marks the end of an era

Alasdair MacIntyre – the great Scottish moral philosopher, Catholic convert, and Notre Dame professor – died on 21 May at the age of 96. He was the most creative and philosophically innovative defender of Aristotle and virtue ethics of the twentieth­ century. So much so that after living just shy of 100 years, his thought nevertheless achieved the enviable age-defying feat of somehow seeming ever-new, attracting ranks of young and energised readers while retaining a momentous tone of omen or even prophecy. Indeed, MacIntyre’s defence of Aristotle in many ways anticipated our own politically fraught moment decades in advance: foreseeing the plight of liberalism, the crisis of technocratic and expert authority, the so-called “return” of religion, and the rise of new post-liberal ideologies of the right and left.

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