A Short History of Ethics

"Well, I thought if you’re a teen doing philosophy at school, it’s probably a little bit easier to deal with than After Virtue. After Virtue is very famous and important, but it’s a big, sustained argument, and therefore can be quite difficult, whereas you can dip in and out of T he Short History of Ethics . There’s no need to read the different chapters in order. I think his summaries of philosophers are very reliable on the whole. Another thing that’s nice about this is that it gradually adds up to a cumulative argument about the importance of the relationship between history and philosophy. One of the ways in which philosophy is sometimes taught is as if it’s a series of ideas or theories that you can detach from their context. MacIntyre shows that, in moral philosophy in particular, that’s a bad mistake. So I think it’s useful background. There’s lots of good stuff in there about the difference between the modern situation and the pre-modern situation as well."