MacIntyre and Morgenthau. Two Critics of Morality

Alasdair C. MacIntyre and Hans J. Morgenthau are two central figures in the intellectual history of the 20th century who are rarely mentioned together. Without denying the important differ-ences and the distance between the two, these article shows that they converge – partially yet importantly – both in their critique of contemporary morality and in some of the proposed so-lutions. Morgenthau and MacIntyre believed that the post-Enlightenment project of establishing rationalistically an objective and compelling standard of morality is doomed to fail. They also believe that, absent such framework, and given the rejection of pre-modern moral systems by central actors and institutions of modern societies, morality – and social life with it - are left in a Weberian/Nietzschean: de facto individualism, anarchism, and incoherence. The article con-cludes with an invitation of a further and systematic comparison: not only between MacIntyre and Morgenthau’s moral and social critique, but also between their once again converging, orig-inal stance on the epistemological status of the socio-political sciences.