At the end of my previous post highlighting my summer readings, I singled out the late Alasdair MacIntyre’s stinging critique of academic moral philosophy in his 2023 essay On Having Survived the Academic Moral Philosophy of the 20th Century. Most of all, it was MacIntyre’s eloquent description of the pervasiveness of disagreement among philosophers that really resonated with me:

“Disagreement on fundamental issues is in practice taken to be the permanent condition of philosophy. The range of continuing disagreements is impressive: realists versus antirealists in respect of mathematical, moral, perceptual, and historical judgments; dualists versus materialists in the philosophy of mind; utilitarians versus Kantians versus virtue theorists in ethics; Fregeans versus direct reference theorists in the philosophy of language; and a great many more. Add to these a range of disagreements in religion and politics that, themselves non-philosophical, are closely related to philosophical disagreements: theists versus atheists, conservatives versus liberals versus libertarians versus Marxists.”

Moreover, MacIntyre draws a further distinction between incremental “progress” and creativity in philosophy versus the possibility of a “decisive resolution” of any major philosophical problem (emphasis on the word “never” in the original):

“It is not that there is no progress in philosophical inquiry so conceived. Arguments are further elaborated, concepts refined, and creative new ideas advanced by the genius of a Quine or a Kripke or a Lewis. But this makes it the more striking that there is never a decisive resolution of any central disputed issue. So how should we think about this and respond to it?”

In addition, using the concrete example of the philosophical debate between the defenders of Kantian duty-ethics and the proponents of pragmatic consequentialism, MacIntrye concedes that the problem of disagreement in philosophy is an “interminable” or never-ending one. Why? Simply put, because neither party in any given philosophical controversy “has the resources to defeat the other.”

So, why does MacIntyre’s diagnosis of the pervasiveness of disagreement in philosophy strike a raw nerve with me? Because MacIntyre’s diagnosis applies equally to my field (law) as well. Many legal problems and controversies, especially in the domain of constitutional law, can be described as interminable, such as the never-ending debate between progressive and conservative law professors over their competing pet theories of constitutional interpretation.

Given this interminable state of affairs — given the impossibility of a decisive resolution of these questions among legal academics — what is to be done? As it happens, MacIntyre’s approach to philosophical problems is inspired by the natural law tradition of Thomas Aquinas. I will explore this natural-law-inspired approach in my next post …