The Rise of the Neo-Aristotelians

by | Oct 28, 2010 | Influence and networks

I’m excited about going to see Alasdair MacIntyre talk today. I think he’s the most influential living philosopher, and it’s a rare chance to see him speak in London (he moved to the US 40 years ago). The influence of his 1981 book. After Virtue, is still growing. More and more thinkers are following him in embracing Aristotle and a Neo-Aristotelian virtue politics as a way beyond the ethical relativism of liberal, pluralist capitalism.

That includes communitarians on the right, like Phillip Blond, the architect of the Tory party’s Big Society concept, who called for a ‘new communitarian settlement’, and communitarians on the left, like the MP John Cruddas, who writes in the New Statesman today that Labour should embrace a “politics of virtue, rooted in Aristotle, which resists commodification and nurtures community”.

It also includes the literary critic Terry Eagleton, who I see has left behind post-modernism and the relativism of literary theorists like Derrida and Baudrillard to embrace a Neo-Aristotelian / MacIntyrean virtue politics.

MacIntyre, and Aristotle, are obviously back in vogue. But I wonder what he thinks of the contemporary fusion of Aristotle with empiricism and utilitarian happiness measurements? Does he think we can discover a ‘science of flourishing’? Hopefully I’ll get the opportunity to ask him this evening.

The UN building: full of bugs!

by | Oct 27, 2010 | Global system, North America, Off topic

Bad news from the Globe and Mail!

New York City’s bedbug epidemic has spread to yet another landmark in the city that never sleeps – the United Nations, officials at the world organization said on Wednesday.

The pests appeared at places like the Empire State Building and Bloomingdale’s before reaching the city’s center of international diplomacy on the East Side of Manhattan.

The UN press office said a bedbug-sniffing dog had confirmed the presence of bedbugs in furniture in the basement of the Dag Hammarskjold Library, where the offices of the team overseeing the UN headquarter’s $1.9 billion renovation project are housed.

“This furniture has been moved to a part of the building not occupied by staff to facilitate fumigation,” it said.

The library is a three-story annex to the main building.

“Bedbug infestations have been found in many public and commercial buildings throughout New York City indicating a worsening problem,” the UN statement said.