“if My Thesis Is Correct, Kant Was Right”: Revisiting Kant’s Role within Macintyre’s Critique of the Enlightenment Project

“IF MY THESIS IS CORRECT, KANT WAS RIGHT”: REVISITING KANT’S ROLE WITHIN MACINTYRE’S CRITIQUE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT Although Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue is famous for its critique of the Enlightenment project in moral theory, and although Immanuel Kant is usually considered the greatest protagonist of that project, Kant’s role within the argument of After Virtue is far less clear than one might presume. After exploring Kant’s role within MacIntyre’s work — before, within and since After Virtue — this paper will argue that the greatest alternative to Aristotle in contemporary philosophy, ethics and politics is no longer Nietzsche, as After Virtue proposed, but Kant. Kant’s representation by such contemporary Kantians as Paul Guyer is of a figure who presciently anticipated developments in philosophy and politics and has withstood deconstruction by Nietzscheans. Therefore, contemporary Aristotelians still need to find some way to come to terms with Kant’s version of the Enlightenment project and of liberalism — and, indeed, with liberal institutions as justified in Kantian terms.