Home Thoughts: "After Virtue", Trump's America & The Descent Into Barbarism

26 May, 2025

"After Virtue", Trump's America & The Descent Into Barbarism

Last week one of the world's great moral philosophers, Alasdair MacIntyre, passed away. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/may/25/alasdair-macintyre-obituary He was an intellectual giant and his great work "After Virtue" is one of my "Bibles". In many ways, he was a rebel - unfashionable in today's political and philosophical worlds, but uncompromising in his beliefs. It was this rebellious nature and his challenging of the moral landscape's status quo, however, that ensured his importance and relevance; you might agree with him or not, love him or hate him, but you cannot ignore or dismiss him or his views for they asked questions that cannot be ignored abut the nature of man, of goodness and of rightness of action.

The word "virtue" in the title of his seminal magnum opus seems today old fashioned, twee, but to MacIntyre, and indeed to me, a world without virtue is a barren and bleak place; it would be a world where dishonesty, lack of empathy, lack of honour, lack of doing the "right thing", lack of decency or justice prevailed. We are already seeing this in our everyday worlds; it is the defining culture of Trump's Presidency in America, it is the edge of barbarism. If we have no virtue - goodness, a willingness to do "the right thing", to live our lives striving to act morally - then what are we and what will the world become? To be virtuous does not mean to simply obey society's rules or be fearful of the consequences of our actions but to strive throughout our lives to develop qualities such as honesty, courage, empathy, sympathy and to do these things with no thought of reward or punishment. As MacIntyre says so powerfully in After Virtue: “Virtues are dispositions not only to act in particular ways, but also to feel in particular ways. To act virtuously is to act from inclination formed by the cultivation of the virtues”; as humans we must strive daily to develop virtuous qualities. In short, it is to fulfil the requirements set out in St Paul's Letter to the Philippians:

"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true,

Whatsoever things are honest,

Whatsoever things are just,

Whatsoever things are pure,

Whatsoever things are lovely,

Whatsoever things are of good report;

If there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things...."

After Virtue sits by my side, within touching distance on my office shelf with other great philosophical works or the western civilization: Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, Karl Popper's The Open Society & Its Enemies, Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, Iris Murdoch's Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, Sartre's Being & Nothingness, Ayre's Truth & Logic, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Descartes' Meditations, Pascal's Pensées, John Rawls' Theory of Justice, Michael Sandel's Justice, Isaiah Berlin's The Crooked Timber of Humanity, Derek Parfit's Reasons & Persons, John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding......and many, many more.

My life would be quite unthinkable without these great works to dip into, to help me make sense of our world and my place in it; and in these worrying times to provide some consolation and understanding as I ponder the dangerous paths that modern mankind is travelling. These works, some of them thousands of years old, are not dusty old fashioned tracts with no relevance for us today. They are timeless, about today and for today; they are the wisdom of thousands of years by the greatest intellects of those centuries and as such, teach us and show us the way forward.

In 1981 (almost 50years ago!) when After Virtue was first published Alasdair MacIntyre wrote in his book: “What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without ground for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time.”

Fifty years ago MacIntyre wrote that but, given the state of the world in 2025, it is so prescient today. He was not wrong; in Trump's America, Putin's Russia, Netanyahu's Israel, many parts of Europe and here in the UK the barbarians are indeed governing us or at least at the gates, the dark ages are returning. It may be too late, but we owe it to ourselves, to past generations and to future generations to understand the wisdom of MacIntyre and these other great thinkers and ensure that "civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained".

RIP Alasdair MacIntyre - a brilliant mind, a rebel, a man unafraid to stand up for what he believed in and most importantly a good and virtuous man.

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Words to ponder.......

Thomas Rainsborough, a Parliamentary soldier and a Leveller, believed in universal suffrage, an end to the monarchy, religious tolerance, universal ownership of common land and equality of justice for all men. One of the greatest speakers of his day, these few words of his when he contested Cromwell in the Putney Debates (set up by Cromwell to discuss a constitution at the end of the Civil War) are, for me, amongst the greatest in the English language and at the very heart of what democracy and the individual's relationship with the state should be:

Oliver Cromwell: “If they that have no goods and chattels make the laws equally with them that hath, then they will make laws to take away the property of them that hath.”

Thomas Rainsborough: “If it be that all Englishmen cannot be free and some Englishmen have property and other have nought, then you have said it, my Lord General, not me...For really, I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he and therefore truly, Sir, I think it clear, that every man that is to live under a Government ought first by his own consent put himself under that Government; but I do think that the poorest man in England is not bound to that Government if he hath not had a voice to put himself under”

Thomas Kyd (Playwright, poet & author)

"Where words prevail not, violence prevails"

"The less I speak, the more I meditate"

From Oliver Goldsmith's 1770 poem "The Deserted Village" - a savage social commentary on the inequalities of his day which anticipate today's world:

".....Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay......."

Tony Judt (Historian and Philosopher):

1. We have responsibilities for others, not just across space but across time. We have responsibilities to people who came before us. They left us a world of institutions, ideas or possibilities for which we, in turn, owe them something. One of the things we owe them is not to squander them.

2. Most taxation goes towards paying off past debts or investing in future expenditures. Accordingly there is an implicit relationship of trust between past taxpayers and present beneficiaries, present taxpayers and past and future recipients - and of course future taxpayers who will cover the cost of our outlays today. We are therefore undeniably required to trust not only people that we don't know today, but people that we could never have known and people we shall never know with all of whom we have a complex relationship and mutual interest.

Hillary Clinton (Politician)

"Talent is everywhere opportunity isn't".

Robert Tressell (Author of The ragged Trousered Philanthropists)

‘… What we call civilisation – the accumulation of knowledge which has come down to us from our forefathers – is the fruit of thousands of years of human thought and toil. It is not the result of the labour of the ancestors of any separate class of people who exist today, and therefore it is by right the common heritage of all. Every little child that is born into the world, no matter whether he is clever or dull, whether he is physically perfect or lame, or blind; no matter how much he may excel or fall short of his fellows in other respects, in one thing at least he is their equal – he is one of the heirs of all the ages that have gone before.

Victor Hugo (Author)

“You can resist an invading army; you cannot resist an idea whose time has come.”

Albert Camus (Writer & Philosopher):

"Every wrong idea results in bloodshed – but always the blood of others....If there were a party for those who aren’t sure they’re right then I would join it"

"To name things incorrectly is to add to the misfortune and miseries of the world."

Rowan Williams (Archbishop of Canterbury)

"Most of us speak and listen largely to those who share our world - and as a result assume that it is the natural one to belong to......When I enter into a dialogue with a person from another culture or belief I am not out to secure agreement, but to understand."

Atticus Finch in 'To Kill A Mocking Bird' by Harper Lee

“You never really
understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you
climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Maya Angelou (Author)

"I've learned that people will forget what you did and that people will forget what you said. But people will never forget how you made them feel".

George Bernard Shaw (Author & playwright)

"We are made wise not by the recollection of our past but by the responsibility of our future"

Noam Chomsky (Linguist, philosopher and activist)

“The standard technique of privatisation by capitalist governments is the same the world over: de-fund and
so things go wrong. People get angry, so sell it cheaply to private capital and say everything will improve with competition. The public buy it every time”

"Propaganda is simple, repetitive, easy to understand and repeat. It requires no thought and its simplicity is crucial because, complexity encourages critical thought and critical thought is the
enemy of authoritarianism........”

Paul Valéry (Poet & Philosopher)
"Our judgements judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows"

John Meynard Keynes (Economist)

“Once we allow ourselves to be disobedient to the accountant’s profit then we have begun to change society for the better......”

Blaise Pascal (French philosopher & mathematician)

“All mankind’s miseries derive from being unable to sit alone in a quiet room........Can anything be more stupid than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the river and his ruler has a quarrel with my ruler – though I have not quarrelled with him!”

Tony Benn (Labour Politician)

“If we can find the money to kill people in war then we can find the money to help people in peace”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (American Supreme Court Judge)
"Language is the blood of the soul into which our thoughts run and out of which they grow"

Anon:

"The story of a poor man's life is written on his body with a pin".

Gary Younge (Journalist):

"We like our history neat - an easy-to-follow,
self-contained narrative with dates, characters and landmarks with which we can weave together otherwise unrelated events into one apparently seamless length of fabric held together by sequence and consequence. Complexity, with all its nuances and shaded realities, is a messy business. So we choose the facts to fit the narrative we want to hear".

Dr Samuel Johnson (Writer & critic)

"If nothing may be published but what civil authority shall have previously approved, then power must always be the standard of truth".

Hannah Arendt (Philosopher & political scientist)

Totalitarianism begins in contempt for what you have. The second step is the notion: “Things must change—no matter how, Anything is better than what we have.” Totalitarian rulers organize this kind of mass sentiment, and by organizing it articulate it, and by articulating it make the people somehow love it..... Totalitarianism appeals to the very dangerous emotional needs of people who live in complete isolation and in fear of one another......

The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer...... And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.

The law of progress holds that everything now must be better than what was there before. Don’t you see if you want something better, and better, and better, you lose the good. The good is no longer even being measured.

George Orwell (Author)

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear".

From "Queen Mab" by Shelley:

"....Those who have struggled and with resolute will, vanquished earth's pride and man's meanness; Who have burst the chains, the icy chains of custom and have shone; Then they are the day stars of their age"

Stephen Kinnock (MP) on the murder of MP Jo Cox during the Referendum campaign 2016:

"What nobler vision can there be than that of a society where people can be comfortable in their difference. And what more fundamental tenet of decency is there than to put first and to cherish all that makes us human, as opposed to what divides one group from another. These are the ideals that are often maligned when they are described as multiculturalism, but they are precious nonetheless. They are the ideals which led Jo Cox to campaign tirelessly for the brutalised and the displaced and they are the ideals for which she has now died. The idealism of Jo Cox was the antithesis of such brutal cynicism. Honour her memory, because the values and the commitment that she embodied are all that we have to keep barbarism at bay".

George Orwell (Author):

"Political chaos is connected with the decay of the language".

Simone Weil (Philosopher):

"Whenever one tries to suppress doubt there is tyranny".......One must always be ready to change sides with justice, that fugitive from the winning camp".

By Alcuin of York in 790 AD to Charlemagne, king of the Franks:

“Vox populi, vox Dei”. Can be translated as "The voice of the people is the voice of God". However, beware, the devil is in the detail; the whole quote has a rather different meaning and can be translated as “And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.” Very apposite in the 21st century world of Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Brexit, Donald Trump and the rest of the populist crowd.

Pope Francis (2016):

“.....a world based on the unlimited satisfaction of individual wants is unattainable, and the attempt to reach it destructive of the world around us, and of the peace of our inner worlds. When people become self-centred and self-enclosed, their greed increases. The emptier a person’s heart is, the more he or she needs things to buy, own and consume. It becomes almost impossible to accept the limits imposed by reality........The lack of physical (and not virtual) contact is cauterising our hearts and making us lose the capacity for tenderness and wonder, for pity and compassion.......... We should be particularly indignant at the enormous inequalities in our midst.....We
fail to see that some are mired in desperate and degrading poverty, with no way out, while others have not the faintest idea of what to do with their possessions, vainly showing off their supposed superiority and leaving behind them so much waste which, if it were the case everywhere, would destroy the planet. ... We continue to tolerate that some consider themselves more human than others.........We are not interchangeable items of merchandise or information processors. We are children, we are family, we are God’s People.”

Michael Foot (Politician):

“Margaret Thatcher tells us that she has never been much interested in reading fiction, so we might assume that she has little imagination and thus no compassion; for those who cannot imagine the life of another cannot possibly understand and empathise with them....and whilst it is true that men and women of power often have little time to read; yet they who do not read are unfit for power''

Alan Bennett (Author & Playwright):

"I have no fear of the state. I was educated at the expense of the state both at school and university. My father’s life was saved by the state as on one occasion was my own. This would be the nanny state, a sneering appellation that gets short shrift with me. Without the state I would not be standing here today. I have no time for the ideology masquerading as pragmatism that would strip the state of its benevolent functions and make them occasions for profit. And why roll back the state only to be rolled over by the corporate entities that have been allowed, nay encouraged, to take its place? I am uneasy when prisons are run for profit or health services either. The rewards of probation and the alleviation of suffering are human profits and nothing to do with balance sheets.

David Cameron has been preaching the virtues of what he calls ‘the smart state’. This seems to be a state that gets away with doing as little as possible for its citizens and shuffling as many
responsibilities as it can on anyone who thinks they can make a profit out of them. I’m glad there wasn’t a smart state when I was being brought up, a state that was unsmart enough to see me and others like me educated free of charge and sent on at the city’s expense to university, provided with splendid libraries, cheap transport and a terrific art gallery, not of course to mention the city’s hospitals. 'Smart' to Mr Cameron seems to mean doing as little as one can get away with and calling it enterprise. Smart as in 'Smart Alec', smart of the 'smart answer', which I’m sure Mr Cameron has to hand. Dead smart".

Joseph Goebbels (Hitler’s propaganda chief):

“If you tell the same lie enough times, people will believe it; and the bigger the lie, the better... There is no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals for intellectuals will never be converted. Always speak to ‘the man in the street’ and arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect.....Truth is unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology".

Alexie Sayle (Writer & comedian):

“Tyranny is the removal of nuance.”

John Milton (Poet)

"None can love freedom heartily but good men. The rest love not freedom but licence"

Martin Niemoller (German Protestant Pastor who spent seven years in a Nazi concentration camp when he took a stand against Hitler):

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me".

26 May, 2025

"After Virtue", Trump's America & The Descent Into Barbarism

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