He has been the most influential thinker of the 20th century and the first quarter of the 21st century in terms of Philosophy morality in the Anglo-American world

Alasdair MacIntyre passed away in the United States at the age of 96, on May 21st. In recent years, his work has been examined from the perspective of bequest , even when his long life prevented him from writing or expressing himself, while his philosophical proposals and teachings were increasing their influence. Born in Glasgow in 1929, he had the eventful youth of those born in a depressed world between two great wars, with an uncertain political environment and a society with a devastated conscience. MacIntyre knew firsthand the way of life of the great industrial cities of England in his youth, where the characterization of certain characters in Dickens' novels was still a reality. This explains his early inclination towards Marxism and the absence of religion in his life during his years of study and the beginning of his philosophical production, both attitudes that changed throughout his life: he discarded Marxism as model complete philosophical and embraced religion through Christianity, with various stages that concluded in a plenary session of the Executive Council Catholicism. Along the way, he diminished his adherence to analytical thinking and psychoanalysis, while developing his own philosophical system, based on ethics to encompass all aspects of thought and people, and seeking to counteract a modernity oscillating between Kant and the utilitarians, which he perceived as ominous.

MacIntyre is often said to have been the most influential thinker of the 20th century and the first quarter of the 21st century in terms of Philosophy morality in the Anglo-American world. Such an assertion seems insufficient to us, because labeling MacIntyre's thought to the point of reducing it to a single aspect would be unfair to someone who made Philosophy , with the utmost breadth of vision and a constant spirit of revolution against a dominant order (in moral and social life, in the way of thinking and reasoning), the driving force of his own existence. MacIntyre is not a philosopher of morality, although he deals extensively with it, but rather a philosopher of life, of people, of society, of politics, of human relations, and of economics. There is morality in everything, but it cannot restrict a broader vision.

His major work, After Virtue , published in 1981, provided a novel understanding, explanation and application of ethics, considering that human issues and relationships between people should be viewed in the light of virtues, with the eminently intended internship considering the lives and circumstances of those same people. MacIntyre became a convinced Aristotelian who practiced Aristotelianism, proclaiming that Aristotle preserves philosophical proposals for the present world; many of these proposals, sifted by Saint Thomas Aquinas as the medieval receiver, compiler, and explanatory author of Aristotle, are definitively updated for the benefit of the present. MacIntyre was an open man, a philosopher who contemplated the entirety of what affects people in society and reflected on it before writing. He was a man who loved study, fostered disciples, and created schools from very distinguished academic institutions; he was a nonconformist, not complacent, demanding, and critical of a world that, being his own, he fully identified with what is called "modernity": the evolution of the West, for centuries past, with a complete loss of reference points for people's lives to be complete, good, based on virtue, and just and generous; that ultimately written request , be a good life, achieved in its own ends.

In contrast to the modern traditions of the social contract and liberalism, it proposes a society that is understanding among its members, with justice based on the virtuous relationship between them, and exalting friendship and solidarity over individualism. financial aid mutual understanding and reciprocal care. He also rejects "emotivism" because it prevents the existence of a true moral language, and therefore of an objective morality. Thus, he rebels against the Enlightenment precisely because of its moral uncertainty, and because it denies, through erroneous premises, the teleological attainment of persons, genuinely linked to the internship of virtues and the pursuit of excellence. The life of each person is not an isolated event, but is based on the experience and existence of many others before and in their own time, so that an authentic purpose of life, a telos toward which human activity itself tends; this is what MacIntyre defines as the narrative of a human life. Truthfulness, justice, and courage, MacIntyre says, are three essential elements for achieving the life fulfilled in each of us in a particular way, and at the same time contributing to others achieving it as well.

MacIntyre was a man of his time, despite his protests against this modernity. But his determination to denounce the failure of the Enlightenment, which he warned against, continues to this day; it was not simply a pose or a show-stopping attitude. From his later years, guide which he used to demonstrate that the world could and should be different, that justice—a generous justice that extends to others—was possible and necessary in all areas of people's lives, and that it is always legitimate to oppose the dominant order with truth and goodness, ensuring that this good reaches everyone. The task now remains to continue studying what he wrote and to seek in his teachings renewed arguments for building a better society.