Macintyre, Rawls and Cavell on Games, Rules and Practices
Macintyre, Rawls and Cavell on Games, Rules and Practices

Summary/Abstract: John Rawls and Alasdair Macintyre are usually portrayed as opponents in the liberal-communitarian debate. However, Stanley Cavell’s critique of Rawls’ early paper “Two Concepts of Rules”, helps us recognize a similarity between their accounts of rules, games and practices and the role that these play in moral life. This paper shows that both authors pay insufficient attention to personal relationships, the flexibility of our moral life, and the need to take responsibility for our moral positions. A scene from Thomas Hardy’s “Jude the Obscure” is used to show how this presents a serious problem for Macintyre’s model of tradition-based moral reasoning.

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