Utopianism of the Present: MacIntyre on Education and the Virtue of Hope

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I explore some of MacIntyre’s ideas concerning utopia, education, and hope. I firstly analyse MacIntyre’s suggestion that teachers are the forlorn hope of Western culture. I argue that the rather pessimistic tone of this conclusion is only seemingly (and not actually) at odds with what MacIntyre says elsewhere about the potential of education to challenge the worst excesses of advanced capitalism. To help build this argument, I secondly examine what MacIntyre says about the social virtue of hope in Marxism and Christianity. There he documents some significant concerns with Marxist ideology but nonetheless concludes that Marxism is the only project that can re-establish hope as a social virtue. I thirdly document how MacIntyre continues to champion the virtue of hope in his more recent work. However, the hue of this virtue has become both Marxist and Aristotelian. He now holds that a “utopianism of the present” is needed to combat advanced capitalism. While utopians of the future sacrifice away the possibility of learning how to transform the present, utopians of the present refuse to make this sacrifice. MacIntyre’s later work suggests he has renewed hope that a practice-based education can contribute to a utopianism of the present: a utopianism that can challenge the iniquities and distortions generated by market based economies.

KEYWORDS:

• MacIntyre
• utopia
• education
• virtue
• hope

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

James MacAllister is a senior lecturer in philosophy of education at The University of Edinburgh. He principally researches the philosophy of education. His recent publications include a single author research monograph with Routledge in 2017 entitled Reclaiming Discipline for Education: Knowledge, Relationships and the Birth of Community, as well as a paper in the Journal of Scottish Thought from 2018 called “Ronald W. Hepburn on Wonder and the Education of Emotions and Subjectivity.”

Notes

1 They also connect to some of his earliest essays, perhaps especially “Notes from the Moral Wilderness” (MacIntyre 2009).

2 MacIntyre has conceded that his educational proposals can be construed as utopian (MacIntyre and Dunne 2002, 15; Knight 2007).