Conclusions

Abstract

Can and should political philosophy be carried on ‘in the manner of’ the Enlightenment? In this book we examined the Enlightenment commitments to scepticism and moral equality, and the idea that morality-as-such and reason-as-such should be pre-eminent in our political reasoning. In contrast, for one school of thought, historicism, the Enlightenment was a failure because it encouraged the false belief that reason and morality are not constituted by tradition. For MacIntyre, reason and morality must be re-connected with the ‘settled convictions’ of a community where there is a consensus on the hierarchical ordering of goods. MacIntyre’s rejection of the Enlightenment commitments to moral equality and scepticism is illustrated by his small-scale (non-State) communitarianism and his historicist epistemology and moral theory.