Krytyczna, radykalna czy rewolucyjna? O „tomistycznej” fi lozofi i politycznej Alasdaira MacIntyre’a
Critical, Radical or Revolutionary? On Alasdair MacIntyre’s ‘Thomistic’ Political Philosophy

Summary/Abstract: The article is devoted to a presentation of the political philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre, one of the most well-known of contemporary American philosophers representing the Aristotelian tradition. MacIntyre is universally reputed to be the reviver of ethical virtues and the flag-bearer of the ‘communitarians’, in other words, a critic of individualistic liberalism. The paper brings a new interpretation to bear on this epicyclic characteristic of the author of After Virtue and, at the same time, develops the polemics of those interpreters of his philosophy who assign him to either the conservative or the communitarian camp. Since the mid 1990s, MacIntyre has adopted an explicitly Thomistic position in his philosophy, particularly while amplifying the Thomist concept of natural law as “potentially revolutionary” in terms of the liberal establishment. Besides this, he returned to the social and political critique which he had developed in the Marxist spirit in the 1950s and 60s. In absolute certainty, he cannot be dubbed a conservative philosopher. The article presents the latest version of his philosophical theory, wherein his critique of liberalism, the modern state and the capitalist system occupy an important place.

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