Virtue and Utopia

In his elaboration of ‘practical anarchism’ (‘practical’ as in ‘practical philosophy’, i.e., ethical), Franks draws extensively on Alasdair MacIntyre’s virtue ethics, especially as set out in After Virtue (1981), and proposes that: “anarchism ... and its distinguishing characteristic of adherence to prefigurative tactics ... is best considered as a social virtue theory compatible with the format developed by MacIntyre.” (p. 156) I am not an anarchist, but I am interested in the prospects for a united and effective Left, and I think Franks’ proposal to found anti-capitalist politics on virtue ethics has much to offer. Franks accepts MacIntyre’s concept of ‘practices’ which is close to what I call ‘collaborative projects’. In particular: “like MacIntyre, they [anarchists] view the social world as being constructed out of intersecting social practices.” (p. 141) MacIntyre defines a ‘practice’ as: “any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realised in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity.” (1981, 175) and he goes on to gives examples: games like chess or football, professions such as architecture, enquiries such as physics, chemistry or history, arts such as painting and music, and the creation and sustaining of households, cities and nations. All practices are aimed at the achievement of some good. And a virtue is defined as: “an acquired human quality the possession and exercise of which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices.” (p. 178) So virtue is relative to the practice in which it is utilized. No human quality is absolutely virtuous, at least for the foreseeable future. Practices, as MacIntyre sees it, are components of a tradition. A tradition is “an historically extended, socially embodied argument, and an argument precisely in part about the goods which constitute a tradition” (p. 207).