"The virtues therefore are to be understood as those dispositions which will not only sustain practices and enable us to achieve the goods internal to practices. but which will also sustain us in the relevant kind of quest for the good. by enabling us to overcome the harms. dangers. temptations and distractions which we encounter. and which will furnish us with increasing self-knowledge and increasing knowledge of the good. The catalogue of the virtues will therefore include the virtues required to sustain the kind of households and the kind of political communities in which men and women can seek for the good together and the virtues necessary for philosophical enquiry about the character of the good. We have then arrived at a provisional conclusion about the good life for man: the good life for man is the life spent in seeking for the good life for man, and the virtues necessary for the seeking are those which will enable us to understand what more and what else the good life for man is."
Alasdair MacIntyre

January 1, 1970

Quote Details

Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Added on April 10, 2026
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English

Sources

p. 219

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alasdair_MacIntyre