PPESexton2026

We go to the gym to be healthier or look more attractive. We play games of chess with the intent to win. We commute to work to make money and to school with the long-term goal of making more money. This makes sense. We need our health to keep walking, our money to keep buying things, and those small hits of dopamine at the end of a chess win to keep living. But at what point does virtue get pushed to the wayside? It seems most practitioners are chiefly concerned with achieving external goods first. E.g. the star chess player who spends hours studying computer lines or the champion debater who spreads the longest without breathing. People might be so obsessed with might be winning the most tournaments, that they lose sight of the tradeoff: they are masters at a system of winning, but novices to the excellence needed to acquire internal goods. It seems as though, a reorientation to these internal goods is needed. Less "how do I win my Super Smash Brothers Ultimate tournament?" ...

Following his account of practices and virtues, Macintyre devotes ample time to the discussion of institutions. He very categorically states that institutions “are characteristically and necessarily concerned” with the acquisition of external goods, including both material and immaterial fancies, with the latter servicing the former. (194) Institutions are deemed necessary as they function as the “social bearers” of any practice. While a practice like medicine itself focuses on internal goods, such a practice cannot survive for any length of time without the material support of institutions like hospitals, laboratories, or states. Thus institutions are necessarily tasked with acquiring the money, power, and status required to sustain the activity, all external goods. The pursuit of practice is an inevitable feature of man’s desire, and thus institutions themselves become an inevitable feature of man’s society.  Yet although they may be benign in their inception, Macintyre proceeds ...

In After Virtue , Alasdair MacIntyre lays out his argument about internal/external goods, practices, and virtues. First, he contrasts internal and external goods. External goods are always some individual's property or possession, such as fame or money(190). The more someone has, the less there is for others. On the other hand, internal goods are good for the whole community. It can only be achieved through practice and can be appreciated only by someone with genuine competence in the practice. An example of an internal good would be the excellence a portrait painter achieves by mastering a new quality of perception. This would benefit the entire community and not take anything from others.  A key point in the definition of an internal good is that it can only be achieved through a practice. How then can one enter a practice? MacIntyre answers this by saying that entering a practice requires submission to standards and accepting the inadequacy of one's own tastes. He says this ...

Alasdair MacIntyre’s concept of internal goods in After Virtue parallels Karl Marx’s idea of species-being, though they do operate at a different level of analysis. For MacIntyre, internal goods are those realized only through participation in a practice and according to its standards of excellence; they are constitutive of the activity itself rather than externally attached rewards. As he writes, “what the artist discovers within the pursuit of excellence… is the good of a certain kind of life …it is the painter’s living out of a greater or a lesser part of his or her life as a painter that is the second kind of good internal to painting” (190)—internal goods are not merely outcomes but forms of life: to achieve them is to become a certain kind of person through sustained engagement in a practice. Accordingly, “a virtue is an acquired human quality…the possession and exercise of which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices” (191), which means that v...

The choice to lie for a friend can be viewed as a choice between allegiance to virtue (honesty/truthfulness) and allegiance to a relationship. But for Macintyre, this is a misunderstanding of both friendship and the self. Maclyntyre argues that every practice requires a relationship between those who participate in it, defending the Aristotelian view of friendship where friends “share in the pursuit of certain goods” (191). Friendship as a practice is governed by virtues. So, lying to a friend, even if the lie was intended to spare pain, directly undermines the prerequisites that make the friendship possible.  A choice to disobey a virtue (like truthfulness/honesty) to satisfy the demands of a friend is a direct violation of integrity and constancy. Integrity requires a singleness of purpose in a whole life, which is impossible if one shifts between different versions of oneself, being virtuous in private but calculating when social circles demand it. Maclyntyre would then argue t...

  In chapter 14 of After Virtue , MacIntyre finds two features that stand out in Jane Austen’s account of the virtues: her emphasis on constancy (understood as steadfastness of character, the capacity to hold firm in your commitments, judgments, affections, and faithfulness) and her distinction between genuine virtue (amiability) and its simulacrum (agreeableness) (183).  MacIntyre states that Aristotle treats agreeableness as a virtue performed out of considerations of honor and expediency, while Austen insists that the genuine virtue, amiability, requires “a certain real affection for people as such” (183). Amiability and agreeableness can look identical on the surface, because both involve being pleasant, warm, and attentive to others. However, genuine amiability is durable because it is grounded in care for persons, while agreeableness vanishes when it becomes costly or inconvenient, or no longer serves the person's interests. Having drawn this distinction, MacIntyre moves...