A Dead End in Alasdair MacIntyre’s Political Thought? Reconsidering Social Institutions, Pluralism, and the Liberal Tradition

One could read MacIntyre for many years . . . and yet still be fundamentally puzzled about where he stands politically.
—Ronald Beiner^[1]

Introduction

In this article I explore the implications of Alasdair MacIntyre’s political theory. MacIntyre is a relentless critic of liberalism, but what is the alternative? This is difficult to say, as MacIntyre is never very specific on this point. I contend that given his account of what genuine politics is, it does not seem that genuine politics can exist in modernity. If that is so, I suggest the political theory sketched out by MacIntyre may point toward something approximating a minimal national government in combination with an emphasis on local communities, non-state institutions, and decentralization. This kind of political arrangement is emphasized by the various streams of pluralist political thought, including that of Robert Nisbet. This might be characterized as a conservative liberalism or even libertarianism. If true, this runs into the obvious problem of MacIntyre’s resolutely anti-liberal and anti-conservative stance. Thus it seems we are at a dead end: perhaps anarchism is the logical outcome of MacIntyre’s political theory. This article explores the pluralist implications of MacIntyre’s thought while gesturing toward the issues that would need to be explored if this analysis is correct, including a reevaluation of MacIntyre’s assessment of the liberal tradition.

Many discussions of MacIntyre’s political thought tend to put it into conversation with Marxism (e.g., Blackledge and Knight 2011), understandably so given MacIntyre’s own Marxist phase and its continuing influence on his thought. Bernacchio and Knight (2020) summarize MacIntyre’s Aristotelian view of the task of politics as ordering institutions to the common good, and they reject the view that Catholic integralists ought to see MacIntyre as a fellow traveler. They hint at the importance of local political communities in MacIntyre’s thought, but they do not explore this.

Devine (2015) makes a broadly similar argument to my own in that he holds that MacIntyrean politics requires a liberal state, and likely more of a libertarian one. His essay helped refine my thinking and called my attention to some relevant material by MacIntyre, but overall my focus is on alternative institutions while Devine focuses on civic republicanism. Murphy (2003b, 170–72) notes that on MacIntyre’s account local communities may wish to establish a “quasi-state” structure. Likewise, Beiner (2000) makes a number of points parallel to my own. Beiner discusses MacIntyre’s political philosophy in the context of the liberal and communitarian debate of the 1980s and 1990s, which he thinks has largely run its course. While there is a complementary discussion of MacIntyre’s view of the modern state, Beiner does not extend that discussion to what it might imply for an emphasis on mediating institutions. In his foreword to Émile Perreau-Saussine’s biography of MacIntyre, Pierre Manent (2022, xiii) notes MacIntyre’s lack of attention to political institutions: paradoxically, the Aristotelian MacIntyre is fundamentally apolitical. This observation echoes my comments about whether we should conclude that MacIntyre is a de facto anarchist.

It is not clear how MacIntyre’s account of a well-functioning political community could exist in modernity, especially given Western culture’s separation of church and state, a separation endorsed by MacIntyre. The community of deliberation regarding the human good does not (and cannot) coincide with the promulgator of law. If this is so, then that might imply anarchism: no state is legitimate. However, here and there MacIntyre does appear to concede that the state ought to do things. Thus, his thought might imply some sort of minimalist state seen as a public utility.

Given the impossibility of the polis, a “second best” approach for MacIntyre is the development of alternative institutions which seek to integrate intellectual, moral, and social formation. I link MacIntyre’s alternative institutions to the so-called mediating institutions of civil society; such institutions lend themselves more easily to deliberation about a people’s common good than does the state.^[2] All three of the major modern Western political traditions—liberalism, conservatism, and socialism—have a pluralist strand. Pluralism emphasizes that non-state communities shape people and that the centralizing state is a threat to the independence of these communities. Pluralism retains a strong linkage to the premodern forms of political thought from which MacIntyre draws. These pluralist strands are not clearly distinct from each other ideologically, and pluralist thinkers are often classified with multiple labels. For example, Robert Nisbet refers to Tocqueville as a conservative, while Jacob T. Levy calls him a liberal; similarly, Levy highlights the contributions to liberalism of British pluralists, such as the early Harold Laski, who considered himself to be working in the socialist tradition (Nisbet 2006, 119; Levy 2015, 212, 233–34).

As an exploration of possible connections of pluralist thought to MacIntyre’s reflections on alternative institutions, I note similar themes in the thought of MacIntyre and the late sociologist Robert Nisbet. MacIntyre rejects being labeled a conservative and Nisbet does not, yet they reach remarkably similar conclusions. Nisbet, in turn, notes that the modern state has a tendency to break down the vitality of these institutions. On this view, the modern state seeks to create a monolithic loyalty, rendering itself the mortal god. Thus, resistance to the modern state would seem to imply a decentralized, minimalist state.

In short, for the small communities that foster deliberation about our common good to flourish, a relatively noninterventionist state not committed to any comprehensive doctrine is needed. That is, the state is as liberalism conceives it: serving as a public utility providing public goods such as security, infrastructure, and so forth. The obvious irony here is that this liberal state favors capitalism—an economic system MacIntyre has always opposed—and a skepticism toward deliberation about the common good. But if such a state would be intolerable for a MacIntyrean, are we not left with some type of anarchism? It would seem so, and yet MacIntyre’s thought does not seem to require such a conclusion. And even if there is some ambiguity about its political conclusions, there are two distinct areas or agendas for institutional reform or even revolution implied in MacIntyre’s political thought: decentralization of political power and diffusion of authority among mediating institutions. We may even find that the liberal tradition is not as opposed to MacIntyre’s thought as he may believe.

MacIntyre’s Critique of Modern Politics^[3]

In “Politics, Philosophy and the Common Good,” MacIntyre lists four problematic features of modern politics. First is the unphilosophical nature of modern politics and the exclusion from politics of philosophical questions concerning politics. As MacIntyre puts it, “A compartmentalized society imposes a fragmented ethics.” Even philosophy is now a profession, the output of which is aimed at other professionals, rather than the pursuit of wisdom. Second is the exclusion from political debate and decision-making of substantive issues concerning ways of life. Political elites set forth the alternatives that may be chosen. Appeal to first principles is ruled out. Third is the fact that the activities of government are not neutral but promote some visions of the good and undermine others. Finally, political debate is rarely systematic or philosophically deep: “What is lacking in modern political societies is any type of institutional arena in which plain persons—neither engaged in academic pursuits nor professionals of the political life—are able to engage together in systematic reasoned debate, designed to arrive at a rationally well-founded common mind on how to answer questions about the relationship of politics to the claims of rival and alternative ways of life, each with its own conception of the virtues and the common good” (MacIntyre 1998, 235–39). For MacIntyre, there are two key political questions: (1) “What place should the goods of each of the practices in which we are engaged have in our common life?” (2) “What is the best way of life for our community?” (MacIntyre 1998, 240). A community organized so as to pursue answers to these questions is a polis.^[4]

Individual goods and the common good are connected by practical rationality. I can only learn about my individual good through dialogue with others, and in fact our individual good is partially constituted by our participation in debate about our common good. As MacIntyre puts it, “Our primary shared and common good is found in that activity of communal learning through which we together become able to order goods, both in our individual lives and in the political society” (MacIntyre 1998, 243). MacIntyre claims that modern states cannot advance any justifiable claim to allegiance because they are the embodiment of the opposite of the polis: “They are the political expression of societies of deformed and fragmented practical rationality, in which politics, far from being an area of activity in and through which other activities are rationally ordered, is itself one more compartmentalized sphere from which there has been excluded the possibility of asking those questions that most need to be asked” (MacIntyre 1998, 243).

Given the above, MacIntyre contends there are three characteristics of a genuinely political community. (1) “It will be a type of community whose members generally and characteristically recognize that obedience to those standards that Aquinas identified as the precepts of the natural law is necessary, if they are to learn from and with each other what their individual and common goods are” (MacIntyre 1998, 247). Such deliberations involving recognition of the precepts of the natural law might be possible on a local level, but not on any scale larger. In fact, MacIntyre contends that in its birth the modern state rejected the natural law as prior to the state; rather, the modern state takes law to be whatever it says it is (MacIntyre 2011, 14). (2) “Such societies must be small-scale and, so far as possible, as self-sufficient as they need to be to protect themselves from the destructive incursions of the state and the wider market economy” (MacIntyre 1998, 248). (3) It will be a society of small-scale producers: “Genuinely free markets are always local and small-scale markets in whose exchanges producers can choose to participate or not. And societies with genuinely free markets will be societies of small producers . . . in which no one is denied the possibility of the kind of productive work without which they cannot take their place in those relationships through which the common good is realized” (MacIntyre 1998, 249–50).

In sum, I take MacIntyre’s account to involve the migration of sovereignty away from the nation-state, where it currently resides, down to the local community. Such a political community would not ignore conflict but orient it toward a teleological conception of the common good (MacIntyre 2006b, 205–23).

Is Genuine Politics in Modernity Possible?

To sum up, MacIntyre sees the following as the main problems of the liberal state: it is defective in deliberation (it privatizes the good), institution (it is bureaucratic), and economy (it is capitalistic). There is no remedy for the modern state. Does it follow that one should be indifferent to the nature of the modern state in which one lives? Are there less bad ones? If the modern state is as bad as MacIntyre says it is, the less of it the better. Should one sympathetic to MacIntyre promote libertarianism despite its enthusiasm for capitalism?

Given MacIntyre’s account of the polis, it is obvious that the modern state cannot be the locus for deliberation about the good, for the reasons MacIntyre has discussed. The liberal state disavows that it endorses or embodies any particular conception of the good. Where then is such a locus? It seems to me that the locus of debate about the common good has to be some community the members of which are committed to some particular concrete account of transcendent good, such as a Catholic parish, a Protestant congregation, or the like. The ends we are to pursue are determined by the highest end. Absent agreement on the highest end, we will be unable to order lesser ends.

This point is a bit fuzzy in MacIntyre; to my knowledge, he never says this outright. However, there are places in his writings which would imply this. For example, as MacIntyre notes in Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, concepts about justice and rationality are bound up in “some larger, more or less well-articulated, overall view of human life and of its place in nature” (MacIntyre 1988, 389). Such a view of human life would posit, explicitly or implicitly, a telos of human life. His comments in Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry that we need to read Aquinas’s Treatise on Law in the context of the earlier questions of the Summa Theologiae, which deal with such things as the existence of God, human nature, and the general principles of morality, would seem to cohere with this view (MacIntyre 1990, 133–35). On the other hand, his view in After Virtue that “the good life for man is the life spent in seeking for the good life for man” might imply that we can deliberate about the proper place of various goods in human societies absent agreement on the highest good. There may have been some sort of shift in MacIntyre’s thinking on this between After Virtue and Whose Justice? Which Rationality? to a view which more firmly embeds justice and rationality in a larger worldview. Yet, Jean Porter criticizes MacIntyre’s account of natural law for not adequately taking into account the embeddedness of natural law reasoning within a philosophical and theological context (Porter 2009, 53–95).

If it is the case that concepts about justice are bound up in a larger philosophical worldview, then deliberations about justice (in this case, the right ordering of goods in a community) need to occur in a context of that shared worldview. This of course is what the modern state lacks. Liberalism holds that, given this situation, subordinate voluntary organizations, not the state, should be the locus of these debates. MacIntyre believes that liberalism is correct in this view; he rejects the communitarian view that the nation-state should be the bearer of a substantive good (MacIntyre 2006b, 210–14).

At this point a crucial difficulty arises. MacIntyre notes the close connection between justice and laws (MacIntyre 1988, ix). However, contemporary local nongovernmental communities that are agreed upon the good differ from the ancient Greek polis by not having the capacity to promulgate law. On the other hand, for a local political community to enact law based on its understanding of its good, it needs some consensus on what that good is. Yet, even on a local level, at least in advanced democratic societies, there will be at least some diversity of comprehensive doctrines, with the exception of “closed” communities like the Amish. If so, how can there be somewhat conclusive debate on how to order goods if there is not a consensus on “the good”? Furthermore, MacIntyre is wary of any type of established religion, noting that

Newman as an historian remarked on the fact that the political establishment of the church has always been bad for the church, often very bad indeed. If we take this to be true—as I do—not only of the church, but also of Protestant churches, of mosques, and of synagogues, then we have a strong theistic reason for holding that in political society none of them should be politically established. So although for a very different reason from the secularizers, theists can be and should be in favor of political forums in which a variety of theistic and other voices are all heard. (MacIntyre 2010, 25)^[5]

Thus we have a twofold problem even if local communities were to acquire sovereignty: (1) Diversity of commitment to the ultimate good even at the local level of political community would thwart agreement on the promulgation of law to further the human good. (2) There is the fact that the communities where there is agreement on the highest good, primarily but not necessarily exclusively being religious communities, do not have the power to legislate. It would seem then that in modern Western culture, politics can only be about the goods of effectiveness (and perhaps that has always been true!).

Local Communities and Alternative Institutions

I see two distinct areas or agendas for institutional reform or even revolution implied in MacIntyre’s political thought, although they do not seem to me to be clearly distinguished from each other. One area is a radical decentralization of political institutions, as noted above. However, creation of genuinely political institutions in MacIntyre’s sense does not seem likely given the twofold problem I mentioned at the end of the previous section. A second area is a focus on alternative institutions. In various places MacIntyre notes that in response to the dire lack of truly political deliberation, Thomists in the past created “alternative institutions, to some degree insulated from the contemporary social order, in an attempt to integrate intellectual, moral, and social formation in a way that would escape the deformations of their age” (MacIntyre 2006a, 122). Thus, absent genuine political communities we have a “second best” or backup plan that presumably will have to make do until circumstances are such that genuine political communities can be formed. I suggest that here is a useful point of contact with the scholarship of those who have written on so-called mediating institutions. These are social institutions or associations of various purposes, which are not the state. According to the literature on these institutions, this is where moral formation takes place. Thus the health of these institutions, or lack thereof, will have a significant impact on the development of the virtues.

In his writings, MacIntyre sometimes refers to local communities, while at other times he refers to alternative institutions. MacIntyre does not clearly distinguish the two.^[6] I shall distinguish between local political communities and social associations. A local political community I take to be some political entity such as the town, an entity able to legislate, while social associations are nonpolitical, things such as universities, a business enterprise, or a soccer club; that is, they do not legislate. They are equivalent to the various entities found in what is often called civil society. Social associations of course often have enforceable policies, but they are under the jurisdiction of and hence accountable to political institutions. In my view, MacIntyre’s call for alternative institutions is a call for making use of social associations. What are the prospects for such social associations? How do these alternative communities fit into contemporary states? A look back at the rise of the modern state with reference to non-state communities will help us highlight the challenges to such institutions.

The Rise of the Centralizing and Modern State

MacIntyre is a strong critic of the modern bureaucratic state. Many scholars have traced the development of the modern state, but here I pay particular attention to the late sociologist Robert Nisbet’s account.^[7] Nisbet was especially concerned with the centralizing nature of the state, its corrosion of local associations, and the rise of the “loose individual.” By “modern state” I mean essentially a set of institutions with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a given territory.

According to Nisbet, to understand contemporary Western society we need to understand the transition from medieval to modern Europe. “It is the social structure of the Middle Ages, real or imagined,” he writes, “that has provided a common point of departure for interpretations as different as those of the socialist Marx and the conservative Maine. It must now be our point of departure also” (Nisbet 2010, 73). The two key social characteristics of the Middle Ages are, first, the preeminence of the small social group and, second (deriving from the first), the centrality of personal status, of membership, in society. There was no sense of the autonomous individual or the centralized state (Nisbet 2010, 74). This pluralistic medieval social order was the social context in which Aquinas wrote. The diverse institutions of that social order were united by a general worldview of Christianity. The modern state arose out of the breakdown of the medieval social order in which there existed a plurality of social associations, none of which claimed exclusive loyalty over its associates. There were emperors, popes, kings, nobles, bishops, guilds, universities, free cities, and so forth. Each of these associations “legislated” in its own way. Individuals had ties and loyalties to several of these entities. As Nisbet summarizes, “The social community, as it existed in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, or later, in the theory of Althusius, is a community of communities, an assemblage of morally integrated minor groups. The solidarity of this community arises out of the moral and social observances of the minor groups. Its unity does not result from being permeated with sovereign law, extending from the top through all individual components of the structure” (Nisbet 2010, 133–34).

This begins to change in the sixteenth century, with the individual becoming detached “from the close confinements of kinship, church, and association” (Nisbet 2010, 79). Gradually, monarchs were able to centralize power by developing ways of extracting revenue not available to other societal actors (e.g., taxation). Eventually the monarch’s personal treasury was transformed into the public treasury and the monarchy was transformed into the symbol of the state’s unity. This power of extraction was facilitated by a combination of fear of enemies and nationalist fervor. Going along with this was an intellectual discrediting of traditional institutional attachments as repressive (Nisbet 2010, 110). William Cavanaugh adds that the state’s “public” violence was seen as the savior from the depredations of “private” violence (Cavanaugh 2009). The rise of the modern state led to the triumph of the centralized, institutionalized state over these local (and, in the state’s eyes, rival) entities.

For Nisbet, we find the modern state theorized most profoundly in the work of Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. When MacIntyre mentions Hobbes he typically refers to Hobbes’s liberal individualism, nominalism, and voluntarism. But it is worth noting that one of the purposes of Leviathan is to justify the subordination of groups to the sovereign. Hobbes states that such things as nobility are the creation of the sovereign. Nisbet notes that for Hobbes other associations have no rights other than those granted by the sovereign. Independent, nonpolitical associations are a threat to order. Even family relationships are contractual. However, this absolute sovereignty is at the service of the individual. The individual is enabled to pursue his or her ends without the encumbrance of social ties (Nisbet 2010, 120–30).

Furthermore, with the weakening of traditional ties, people’s communal instincts came to rest on the state. The centralized state was the sole locus of community, or a substitute church (Nisbet 2010, 150; cf. Cavanaugh 2011, 4). For Nisbet, this theme is on display in Rousseau’s thought, in which the state, rather than being a community of communities, emancipates the individual from the oppressive hand of tradition and societal groupings so as to facilitate the independence and equality of all individuals. Rousseau’s political community is “a moral unity, but it is a unity conferred by the sovereign will of the state and directed by the political government.” Rousseau even advocates a civil religion that is to teach this new theology, rejecting traditional Christian precepts as undermining the state (Nisbet 2010, 134, 136–37).

Nisbet traces a continuation of political centralization even after the sovereignty of the state over church and other institutions was clearly established. In Nisbet’s account, war led to political centralization: the state came to be involved in every aspect of society’s existence. Bureaucracy is prevalent. Nisbet contends that in America, World War I and the moralism of Woodrow Wilson were the turning point for this centralization. The combination of war and political centralization further frayed the social fabric and gave rise to the “loose individual”—a person loosened from traditional ties such as family, church, social class, and so forth. When this happens, the only common denominator of human life is money—the cash nexus (Nisbet 2003, 87–135). The state steps in to regulate the behavior of these loose individuals and to facilitate the pursuit of their self-interest. While few theorists would be likely to agree with Hobbes’s extreme conclusions about social groups being creatures of the Leviathan, Nisbet contends that in practice Hobbes seems to be right. The modern state sees no real limit to its policy-making reach; it is an absolutist state (Nisbet 2003, 41–85).

As Lincoln noted, democracy is government of, by, and for the people.^[8] However, what is “the people”? Nisbet contends there are two ways of conceiving of “the people.” One concept is that “the people” is manifested in the unity of the sovereign state. The other concept is that “the people” is manifested in the plurality of associations. The problem for today’s democracies is how to foster the “plurality of cultural associations which form the intermediate authorities of society” (Nisbet 2010, 244). Nisbet contends that real freedom is not release and collectivization but diversification and decentralization of power; freedom lies in the interstices of authority. The existence of competing authorities means that one can remove oneself from an oppressive authority. We have failed to distinguish between sovereignty and decentralization of administration. The sovereign state is here to stay, but there is plenty of space for decentralization. Nisbet contends that what we need is a new laissez-faire, not of individuals, but of groups. Incidentally, Nisbet notes that hierarchical, ritualistic religions, such as Catholicism, are most resistant to the totalizing ambitions of the state; those that downplay visible ties and community are more susceptible (Nisbet 2010, 223).

To sum up, the key idea is that in modernity there is a sharp distinction between communities that deliberate about the good and those that give law. In the medieval social order this distinction was not as sharp. Furthermore, the centralizing process has culminated in the last century or so with the rise of the absolutist state. The state creates bureaucracies that regulate every aspect of social life. It seems there is no area outside its purview.

A Convergence of Major Themes

In general, the picture of the modern state that Nisbet and other scholars paint for us is one that is congruent with MacIntyre’s account of modern politics. How does Nisbet help us think about alternative institutions? One contribution is that he shows us the obstacles that such institutions face in modernity, such as the sacralization of the state and its hostility to other sovereignties or group loyalties.

I see a convergence between the major themes of Nisbet and MacIntyre. According to Patrick Deneen, Nisbet’s thought has three major areas of concern: (1) Localism: the liberal state is suspicious of citizens’ identification with communities other than the nation; local identification needs to be fostered. (2) Economics: the economy ought to exist to serve society—and specifically local communities—and not vice versa. (3) Education: the educational system currently exists to help students succeed in the globalized market economy as opposed to understanding and defending local ways of life (Deneen 2009). All three of these areas of concern overlap with the concerns that MacIntyre has outlined in “Politics, Philosophy and the Common Good” and elsewhere. The first two line up with MacIntyre’s second and third characteristics of a genuine political community. Education, while not mentioned in MacIntyre’s three characteristics, is a topic to which MacIntyre has frequently returned.

What is the danger of the loose individual? The loose individual is one that has been emancipated from a tradition and the institutions that bear that tradition. Associations pass on traditions, including teleological ones (Nisbet 2010, 43). MacIntyre makes a similar point in the prologue to the third edition of After Virtue. He writes, “When recurrently the tradition of the virtues is regenerated, it is always in everyday life, it is always through engagement by plain persons in a variety of practices, including those of making and sustaining families and households, schools, clinics, and local forms of political community” (MacIntyre 2007, xv). This seems to me to be entirely compatible with Nisbet’s view.

It is perhaps surprising that MacIntyre, who rejects being labeled conservative, and Nisbet, who did not reject that label, reach such similar conclusions. MacIntyre laments the corrosion by state and market of institutions that enable human flourishing. As seen above, these institutions are clearly of a local nature. Nisbet directly links the liberalism of Hobbes and Locke as creating the conditions for the centralized state; liberalism attacks groups, yet as we are political animals, we cannot live without community and so the modern nation-state steps in, clothing itself with a sacredness that once applied to the church (Nisbet 2010, 28).^[9] MacIntyre has often put it as being asked to die for the telephone company (MacIntyre 1994, 303).

While there is overlap between the two thinkers’ views, there is not identity. The key to discerning differences between them can be highlighted by MacIntyre’s first characteristic of political community: a commitment to the natural law so as to reason together about our common good. Such an emphasis is absent in Nisbet. For MacIntyre, a small-scale community is desirable so as to facilitate deliberation about the common good. Nisbet seems rather indifferent as to the truth claims or moral principles espoused by civil society associations. The fundamental impetus of MacIntyre’s intellectual quest has been to gain an adequate standpoint for political and social critique, while Nisbet seems to be mainly concerned with balancing individual freedom with social stability.^[10] Nisbet seemingly treats religion as an instrumental good; he does not seem particularly concerned about the truth claims of this or that particular religion. (In fairness, however, this could well be because Nisbet is aiming at neutral social-scientific analysis rather than normative evaluation.)

Perhaps these two perspectives can be complementary. Can we view Nisbet’s emphasis on embedding the individual into groups as a preliminary necessity for the deliberative and virtue-forming communities that MacIntyre seeks? Nisbet wants education to promote the understanding and defending of local ways of life. Is this simply reaction, or does it imply a defense of goods that can be had only at the local level and by being enmeshed in a local culture? Defense of local ways of life does not necessarily imply mindless defense; it would imply the defense of those goods that are necessary for local ways of life to flourish. Among those goods would be an educational system that apprentices students in the search for truth and the common good.

A Dead End or a MacIntyrean Liberalism?

I have contended that Nisbet’s analysis parallels MacIntyre’s; indeed, there may well be other pluralist thinkers to be put in fruitful conversation with MacIntyre. The key question for those who are sympathetic with MacIntyre’s claims is whether it is possible to preserve old forms of social institutions, or develop new ones, that enable human beings to flourish, to practice the virtues. How, if at all, can this be brought about? A crucial issue is power. How can local political communities and institutions of civil society be empowered? The United States has had its political and legal struggles over federalism and, as Nisbet has noted, federalism has gradually weakened over the past century (Nisbet 2003, vii). This is likely to be an area to be contested for some time. Ironically, given MacIntyre’s strong critique of liberalism (and capitalism), in the American context the MacIntyreans’ closest allies might be the libertarians: recall Nisbet’s call for a laissez-faire approach to associations. In short, it appears that decentralization requires a fairly minimalist liberal state at the national level, assuming MacIntyre’s thought does not de facto imply anarchism.

Here we appear to have run into a dead end: MacIntyre is simply against liberalism. However, my suggestion that liberal political institutions at the national level are a possible implication of MacIntyre’s thought implies that a conceptual separation can be made between liberal political institutions and the modern liberal individualist account of human agency rejected by MacIntyre. In the preface to After Virtue, MacIntyre claims that we have to reject “a large part” of the ethos of the “distinctively modern and modernizing world” (MacIntyre 1984, x; emphasis mine). A large part implies not all. What part should we not reject? The answer is not very clear in MacIntyre’s writings, but perhaps at least some forms of liberal political institutions are among the things we should not reject. MacIntyre’s criticism of liberal politics is focused on the impoverished moral deliberation found in modern politics. I have found nothing in MacIntyre that suggests he would be against the inclusive intent behind the institutions of liberal democracy (perhaps conveniently defined by the several characteristics laid out in Dahl 2000, 83–99). MacIntyre does not advocate for established religions, unequal privileges in law, limitations on free speech, revocation of universal suffrage, and so forth, all of which are integral to liberal political institutions. So it seems that some form of a liberal state might be acceptable.

While I cannot go into detail here, I suggest that MacIntyre’s characterization of liberalism is too narrow. MacIntyre seems to simply equate liberalism as a broad set of beliefs about human dignity and political institutions with a particular philosophical anthropology within liberalism. Let us call this philosophical anthropology “liberal individualism.” While this is clearly a significant strand of thought in contemporary liberalism, it by no means is the only one. Jacob Levy writes,

Also at fault [in the neglect of pluralist liberalism] is the tendency in the twentieth century to treat rationalist liberalism as the sum total of the liberal tradition, and often to treat rationalism in its various forms as so constitutive of liberalism as to override normative criteria. Think of the recurring tendency to treat Hobbes as a (or the) founder of liberalism, a tendency most often found among liberalism’s critics, whether from the left (Macpherson), the right (Strauss), or elsewhere (Pettit). The liberal tradition came to be identified not with individualism as a normative conclusion, but individualism as a methodological premise. It came to be identified not with constitutionalism as a political practice, but with contractarianism as a foundational commitment. And it came to be identified not with religious freedom as a normative sine qua non, but with the subordination of the church to the state as a desirable aspect of the legal consolidation of modern states. (Levy 2015, 235)

One can see this characterization of liberalism present in both MacIntyre and Nisbet.

Even thinkers not self-consciously pluralist do not fit easily into the autonomous liberal individualist paradigm. For instance, C. R. McCann contends that F. A. Hayek’s anthropology is quite communitarian and does not characterize human beings as the asocial or prosocial entity often taken to be the liberal view (McCann 2002, 5–34). In another vein, Hayek himself explicitly rejects the legal positivism that is often taken to be characteristic of liberalism in favor of the natural law tradition as central to the liberal state he endorses (Hayek 1960, 236–39). Thus, I suggest that MacIntyre’s critique of liberalism may hold true for some strands of liberalism but not others.^[11]

To conclude, it seems that some forms of libertarianism and some forms of conservatism share a powerful critique of the state with MacIntyre. Libertarianism presumes that associations have a right to form and govern themselves according to their own lights; such an environment could well foster a laissez-faire of associations. However, we need to ask whether there are forms of pluralist liberalism that escape MacIntyre’s critique. My tentative conclusion is that MacIntyre and many other thinkers influenced by him are working with a caricature of the liberal tradition that leaves them at a dead end. But if we assume a more nuanced perspective of liberalism, there may be paths forward beyond this apparent terminus.