The Mission to Recover Our Moral Agency
Image credit: Jessica Lam/The Varsity
In “The Recovery of Moral Agency?” Alasdair MacIntyre challenges his readers to reorient their desires (in terms of realizing virtues that will add to their characters) to progress toward recovering their moral agency, and therefore to live in a more thoughtful way in the inevitable face of death.
Our collective moral agency has been lost due to the majority of society denying the possibility for creating formal opportunities to discuss moral questions in social contexts. In absence of this discussion, society lacks the infrastructure to encourage individuals to make efforts to improve their processes of rational deliberation. Progress to advance the rational deliberation capacities of individuals should lead members of society to individually strive to make the correct moral choice between what is commonly good/justly desirable and what is egoistic/temporally desirable.
MacIntyre believes that humankind needs a transformation through the articulation of practice in order to regain moral agency and prevail as a progressing civilization. I agree with MacIntyre. Society needs to go further than showcasing theories plainly as to “address in practice those issues that concern the transformation of our desires and of our attitudes to our desires, so that we may no longer be victimized by them.” (121) Practice, in response to our alienation from our moral and rational deliberation, will aid us in recovering our capacity and with that, the means to morally judge in a way so that choice couldn’t be reasonably rejected by any rational agent. This suggests that it is best to live in a way where no one can debunk others’ moral dispositions because they are all held on the premise of the common good and eternal satisfaction.
Temporal objects like status, wealth, and property are not intrinsically good. If individuals pursue these kinds of goods to their deathbed, they will have lived blinded, ignorant, and unsatisfactory lives. MacIntyre challenges individuals to pursue the objects of desire that are judged “to be good in general for human beings to obtain” and not those that one seeks to attain “just because they are objects of [their own] desire.” (121) When people do certain actions and make particular choices that concern the common good and general welfare, then they are left with a supported sense of moral agency. This is because they rationally deliberated in a way that extended their good faith to other neighbors.
I am challenging myself to reorient my desires and recover my personal moral agency. I am striving to one day be in a position where there no longer will have to be an explicit rational process to orient myself to eternal objects of desire (because I will do so naturally). This practice of virtue will enable me to act in a way that is mindful of my temporality because no longer will I be concerned with what I own in my mortal life, but I will be making choices that impact what I hold in my soul that I will take beyond my finite time on Earth. This eternal peace will come with the recovery of my moral agency.