Book Review: After Virtue

Witty, devastating review of MacIntyre's After Virtue. Scott exposes the missing 'Step 3' in MacIntyre's argument (modern ethics failed to ground itself -> therefore return to Aristotelianism, which... also never produced moral consensus), and the core charge: virtue ethics is UNIQUELY bad at resolving moral dilemmas (you can attach a virtue to either side; there's no authoritative list of virtues; MacIntyre's 'justice = knowing how to balance the virtues' is an empty black box). He rebuts the history too (the Greek city-states were as faction-riven as modernity; Sophocles' Philoctetes is a pre-Aristotle moral dilemma), and skewers the Continental style of vague historical meandering 'designed to make the reader vaguely worry that everything was socially constructed.' Honest coda ('Somebody Here Is Really Confused, And I Just Hope It's Not Me') granting MacIntyre's prestige and his own possible misreading; contrasts favorably with Feser. The fuller parent of his virtue-ethics critique (cf. SSC-130).

Quality 72 · Strong. A sharp, entertaining, substantive takedown with a real philosophical core (virtue ethics can't resolve dilemmas) -- but a mostly-negative review of one book, and self-flagged as possibly missing the point. Upper-Strong.

Claude’s paradigm shift 42 · Moderate. Moderate. Applies his consequentialist lens to demolish a famous book; the dilemma-resolution critique is sharp but he makes it more directly elsewhere.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. A witty, substantive takedown of MacIntyre's After Virtue with a real philosophical core (virtue ethics is uniquely bad at resolving moral dilemmas; the missing 'Step 3'). Conceptual influence within philosophy discourse, a mostly-negative single-book review, no material change — low RWI.

Humor 2/5 · Man of One Study. Comic book-review takedown of MacIntyre's After Virtue — the Ayn-Rand-margin-notes opener ('he can't hear you'), virtue ethics personified as a smug wine-sipper sneering in the corner, the joke section headers ('If You Can't Convince 'Em, Just Start Reciting The Entire History Of The Human Race'), 'a whole week without someone blaming everything on the Enlightenment'. Comedic-takedown voice is structural and sustained → 2.