When Practice Loses Its Soul

Alasdair MacIntyre, Practical Philosophy, and the Struggle for the Common Good

Sometimes one reads a book and experiences something quietly falling into place. Not necessarily as a new answer, but as a recognition. As if the thoughts had already been living silently within one’s own life long before one found the words for them.

That has been my experience reading Alasdair MacIntyre on Practical Philosophy. The book consists of a series of lesser-known essays, lectures, and texts by Alasdair MacIntyre — some previously difficult to access, others never properly published before. It is not a book that speaks loudly. Rather, it works slowly. Page by page, it opens a space in which philosophy once again becomes connected to lived life.

And perhaps that is precisely why I feel at home here.

For what MacIntyre writes about is, at its core, the same question I myself have encountered through a long life in social work, teaching, and practical philosophy:

How can a human being live well within institutions that gradually make good action more difficult?

This is not merely an academic question. It is an existential one. I have encountered it in meeting rooms, in offices, in families in crisis, in conversations with children, in lecture halls, and in those quiet moments when a person struggles to hold on to their own dignity.

MacIntyre writes at one point about practical rationality and irrationality in their social settings. Already the title points toward something essential: human wisdom cannot be understood apart from the forms of life and communities in which it emerges.

This is a deeply Aristotelian perspective.

For Aristotle, the human being is never simply an isolated individual making decisions according to abstract rules. Human beings are shaped through practices, habits, relationships, and communities. Practical wisdom — phronesis — does not arise in a vacuum. It is learned through participation in forms of life where people gradually develop judgment, responsibility, and moral sensitivity.

This is where MacIntyre becomes so compelling.

He continually returns to concrete practices:

• fishermen,
• craftsmen,
• teachers,
• farmers,
• care workers,
• and local communities.

Not because he romanticizes the past, but because he seeks to understand how human rationality actually comes into being.

In one of the texts in the collection, he refers to the Danish ethnologist Thomas Højrup and his description of the fishing community of Thorupstrand in Denmark. This made a deep impression on me.

Thorupstrand is a small coastal community where fishermen attempted to resist the privatization of fishing quotas. When the quota system was transformed into private property that could be bought and sold on the market, many Danish coastal communities quickly began to disintegrate. Fishermen sold their quotas. External investors gained control. Local ways of life were gradually dismantled.

But in Thorupstrand, something different was attempted.

The fishermen organized collectively. The quotas were to be owned in common. Not because they opposed modernity or technology, but because they understood that if the market were allowed to define everything, the very form of life itself would disappear.

This is a decisive point in MacIntyre’s thought.

A society can lose more than jobs.

It can lose particular ways of being human.

When fishing is reduced to economic transaction, what gradually disappears are:

• embodied skills,
• tacit knowledge,
• trust,
• responsibility,
• stories,
• the rhythm between human beings and nature,
• and the sense of belonging within a historical continuity.

For MacIntyre, this is not merely cultural history. It is moral philosophy.

He distinguishes between what he calls internal and external goods.

External goods are:

• money,
• status,
• efficiency,
• power,
• prestige.

Internal goods are the qualities that can only develop within a practice:

• the pride of craftsmanship,
• trust between people,
• loyalty,
• responsibility,
• courage,
• judgment,
• care.

The problem in modern society, according to MacIntyre, is that external goods gradually colonize practices. Efficiency and measurable outcomes begin to dominate areas that actually depend upon human wisdom and relational understanding.

This is something I recognize from social work.

Over many years, I saw how more and more systems became organized around:

• control,
• reporting,
• economics,
• standardization,
• and performance management.

What often disappeared was the language of human dignity.

I still remember a concrete situation from my own practice. A man was preparing for a job interview after a long period outside working life. What he really needed was one simple thing: a haircut. Not as a luxury, but as a way of being able to face the world with a little dignity again.

The system reacted negatively to the idea that this should be funded.

For the system, it was about rules and budgets.

But practical wisdom sees something different.

It sees that dignity sometimes begins in the deeply concrete. In a human being once again daring to meet the gaze of others.

Perhaps this is precisely what MacIntyre is trying to preserve:
the connection between morality and concrete human life.

And here I also sense a connection to the Norwegian tradition of practical philosophy as I encountered it through John Lundstøl. Lundstøl was concerned with the mature and responsible human being, with dialogue, formation, and responsibility. Philosophy was not primarily theory, but a way of living.

The same spirit is present in MacIntyre.

Practical philosophy is not simply about analyzing moral problems. It is about how human beings are shaped through the practices and communities in which they participate.

This is also what makes MacIntyre so relevant to social work.

For social work is not merely the production of services.

It is a moral practice.

And moral practices can deteriorate when the institutions surrounding them lose contact with the human goods they were originally meant to protect.

This applies not only to social work.

It applies to:

• schools,
• healthcare,
• universities,
• local communities,
• families,
• and perhaps modern culture itself.

MacIntyre describes a society in which people gradually lose a shared language for the good life. The result is fragmentation. Roles become detached from wholeness. Work loses meaning. People learn how to function, but not necessarily how to live.

Perhaps this is why so many people in our time experience a quiet emptiness in the midst of all our efficiency.

We have become skilled at organization.

But less capable of asking:
What is a genuinely good human life?

When I read MacIntyre, I therefore experience not merely philosophy, but a form of recognition. Many of the experiences I myself have attempted to articulate through my blog Practical Philosophy find a language here.

When I write about:

• shame,
• dignity,
• care,
• violence,
• helping,
• or those small moments when a human being once again dares to raise their eyes,
  it is really the same question that is present:

How can human dignity be protected in a time when systems become increasingly abstract?

This is what makes MacIntyre so important.

He reminds us that human beings cannot be understood apart from their practices, relationships, and communities.

And perhaps this is precisely what our time needs to hear again.

That a good society is not built merely through economic growth or technological efficiency.

But through practices in which human beings still learn:

• responsibility,
• trust,
• care,
• courage,
• and practical wisdom.

For when such practices are broken down, we lose more than traditions.

We slowly lose the ability to be human for one another.

And perhaps all genuine practical philosophy begins precisely there.

Not in theory alone.

But in the attempt to preserve the common goods of humanity in a world increasingly tempted to make everything measurable.

Perhaps that is why I continue to write.

Not to produce more theories about human beings, but to hold on to something that is easily lost within modern institutions:
human presence, judgment, and dignity.

Practical philosophy may not begin within the great systems.

Perhaps it begins in the quiet responsibility we have for one another.

In small acts that still carry a human face.

References

Aristotle. (2004). Nicomachean ethics (R. Crisp, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Højrup, T. (2011). The need for common goods for coastal communities. Copenhagen: Life Modes Research.

Knight, K., & Wicks, P. (Eds.). (2025). Alasdair MacIntyre on Practical Philosophy. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Lundstøl, J. (1970). The mature human being [Original work published in Norwegian as Det myndige menneske]. Oslo: Gyldendal.

MacIntyre, A. (2007). After virtue (3rd ed.). Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

MacIntyre, A. (1999). Dependent rational animals: Why human beings need the virtues. Chicago: Open Court.

MacIntyre, A. (2016). Ethics in the conflicts of modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Practical philosophy may not begin within the great systems.

Perhaps it begins in the quiet responsibility we have for one another.

In small acts that still carry a human face.

This text is written in a conversation with OpenAI/ChatGPT, which also created til illustration.