A Rawlsian Solution to Institutional Effacement

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 by warning us of the intimate relations between institution and practice, and the consequent relations between external goods and goods internal to practice. Because external goods are required to sustain the pursuit of internal goods, a "single causal order" is formed, which means that the ideals of a practice  “are always vulnerable to the acquisitiveness of the institution, in which the cooperative care for common goods of the practice is always vulnerable to the competitiveness of the institution.” (193). Any institution may become tempted by the external goods, which were once a means to the end of pursuing the practice, and treat the external goods as the ends in themselves, with the practice being the means to achieve them. The practice is stripped of its inherent point and subverted to a mere device used by individuals to achieve personal property or power. A hospital, for example, established with the intent of practicing medicine, is very quickly induced by the benefits of profitability and reputation, and its practice becomes merely an instrument for profitability.

Such a society, where these competitive, external ends become dominant, suffers “first attrition and then perhaps something near total effacement” of virtue. Simulacra, or fake versions of virtue and excellence take the place of real virtue, and both institutions and practices will decay.
To prevent this decay, the integrity of a practice depends entirely on the character of its practitioners. MacIntyre argues that every practitioner must embody a core triad of virtues: truthfulness, described as “allegiance to each other in the pursuit of common goods”; justice which requires that we “treat others in respect of merit or desert according to uniform and impersonal standards”; and courage, which is the “capacity to risk harm or danger to oneself” to help others. If practitioners inside an institution abide by these values, then they can serve as a bulwark against the insidious tendencies of the institution. In upholding these values, they ensure that the principal focus of the institution remains on the practice for which it was originally intended, and not the beguiling promises of external means.

However, I believe there is a much more practical solution. Rather than placing the burden to abide by these three traits on practitioners, place it on the institution. Structure institutions such that they abide by these principles and therefore prevent the self-collapse into corruptive forces. Institutions mostly outlast individuals, which means they are no longer reliant on virtuous practitioners. Over time, even well-intentioned individuals will be replaced by others who may not share the same commitments, making any virtue-dependent system inherently unstable, and thus the institutions must keep them in check. This could be done by creating a stringent minimum requirement, in which basic statutes must be met in order for individuals to benefit from external means. In a hospital, for example, abiding by trust, courage, and justice could be prerequisites for doctors before they receive their salaries. In the government, the same would be said for legislators. 

Some may say that it is possible for institutions, in enticed by external factors, to abandon their own rules, and begin to disobey the values of justice, trust, and courage. Yet, institutions that abide by these values are more likely to sustain themselves in the long term, helping them obtain more external goods. Macintyre believes that the unchecked pursuit of external goods erodes society into to a State of Nature, and this ultracompetitive environment is not beneficial to institutions. He writes that in such a world, “competitiveness would be the dominant and even exclusive feature”. (196). Thus even profit-driven actors therefore have reason to support institutional responsibility to abide by virtue over individual responsibility, for their hounding of external goods would be more stable and far less competitive. In this way, we could prevent – or at minimum, delay – the collapse of institutions, all whilst operating under Macintyre’s constraints. Feel free to comment and disagree, I would very much like to have my mind changed about this! I myself am skeptical of institutions that insist on moral imposition; yet this seems to be a reasonable solution given Macintyre's premises.