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Section 5
History
The review I have presented thus far of Whose Justice? Which Rationality? may
give the false impression that the book consists of highly abstract discussions
of such issues as relativism, liberalism, rationality and religious traditions.
Such discussion are indeed to be found between the covers of this volume, but
the bulk of the work is history. The concepts of justice and practical
rationality are examined through their historical developments in four
traditions: Aristotelian, Augustinian, Humean and modern liberal. The book is
divided into twenty chapters, the first of which is an introduction. There
follow seven chapters on the evolution of the concepts of justice and practical
rationality from the Homeric period, through Plato and culminating in
Aristotle's conceptions of justice and practical rationality. Next come three
chapters on Augustine and the synthesis between Aristotelian and Augustinian
thought formulated by Aquinas. This is followed by five chapters on the
Scottish Enlightenment, ending with a critique of Hume. There is only one chapter
specifically devoted to modern liberalism, and then three more to draw
conclusions.MacIntyre contends that the concepts of justice and
practical rationality must be studied through the examination of the traditions
in which these concepts have emerged. But the history MacIntyre tells is not a
mere recounting of what was said or written in the past; rather, it is a
critical history in which triumphs and defeats are evaluated, and lessons drawn
for contemporary thinking on the relevant issues. The critique of liberalism,
for example, is not confined to the chapter devoted specifically to this topic,
but is a theme which recurs amidst historical discussions of earlier traditions
of enquiry. As a result, the history of ideas recounted by MacIntyre is not a
mere succession of doctrines espoused and then forgotten, but it is a history
of how ideas become influential, are misunderstood and are reformed and
synthesized with others through an ongoing process of rational evaluation in
which the very standards of rational evaluation themselves take part in the
process.It is here that MacIntyre may be misunderstood as
advocating historicism, the view that reality is beyond the reach of the human
intellect because the intellect is forever held captive to the prejudices and
other shortcomings of its historical situation. This sort of historicism is
said to result from subtracting the notion of Absolute Mind from Hegels
philosophy29 and it is not uncommon among twentieth century philosophers.
Versions of it have been propounded by Dewey Rorty, Gadamer and Foucault. But
MacIntyre explicitly rejects historicism in both its Hegelian and its more
recent formulations. And here our discussion of the role of history in
MacIntyre's work returns us to the rejection of relativism. Contrary to the
relativist historicists, he holds that it is precisely through the study of the
history of rational debate that the timeless truth reveals itself, and
furthermore, he claims that this approach to reality is advocated by Aquinas.MacIntyre is aware that it will be objected that
rational justification, according to both Aristotle and Aquinas, is a matter of
deducibility from first principles, in the case of derived propositions, and of
the self‑evidence of these first principles ‑as necessary truths.
MacIntyre responds that this objection fails to recognize the difference
between rational justification within a science and the rational justification
of the sciences. It is only the former sort of justification that proceeds by
way of deduction and self‑evidence.Rational justification within a perfected science is indeed
a matter of demonstrating how derivative truths follow from the first truths of
that particular science, in some types of case supplemented by additional
premises; and the justification of the principles of a subordinate science by
some higher‑order enquiry will be similarly demonstrative. [30]As for the rational justification of the sciences,
however, this method is inadequate, for here we face disagreement about what is
self‑evident. But in th.‑ face of this disagreement we are not to
despair, for the intellect has the capacity for dialectical as well as
deductive reasoning. The passage quoted above continues:First principles themselves will be dialectically justifiable;
their evidentness consists in their recognizability, in the light of such
dialectic, as concerning what is the case per se, what attributes, for example,
belong to the essential nature of what constitutes the fundamental subject
matter of the science in question.MacIntyre continues with the admission that there
are some first‑principles, such as the logical relations between wholes
and parts, that any rational being must find undeniable. But these alone will
not be sufficient to provide the necessary basis for the deductive
justification of the sciences. The self‑evident principles admitted by
rival traditions of enquiry will not be sufficient to settle the disputes
between them. For disputes at such a fundamental level there is no alternative
but examination of the history of thought on the disputed subject, an
appreciation of the insights to be gained from each of the rival modes of
enquiry, and an attempt to find a place in one's own tradition for the truths
formulated in the rival tradition.In this way, we find suggestions in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? for a
programme which would lead to the development of Islamic thought, and whose
successful completion would result in the revival and vindication of its
traditions of enquiry in the international marketplace of ideas Islamic centres of learning, God willing!
Notes:
[30].Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, p. 173.
