Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues.

Lewis, V. Bradley

MACINTYRE, Alasdair. Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues. Chicago: Open Court, 1999. xiii + 172 pp. Cloth, $26.95--Dependent Rational Animals consists of a revision of the three Paul Carus Lectures delivered by MacIntyre at the 1997 Pacific Division meeting of the APA. The book is rather different from MacIntyre's work since After Virtue in that it proceeds systematically rather than historically to develop a Thomistic-Aristotelian view of ethics that takes its departure from (1) the continuities in human and nonhuman animal nature and (2) the role of dependence in human lire. These issues lead to a consideration of the distinctive virtues required of us if we are to become independent practical reasoners able to acknowledge our dependence on others in arriving at that state of independence as well as continuing dependence on others with whom we participate in the relationships of giving and receiving through which we pursue the goods that constitute human flourishing. The argument proceeds in roughly three stages.

First MacIntyre argues for a more direct continuity between human nature and the nature of nonhuman animals through a discussion of whether or not nonhuman animals can be said to act for reasons. While many have argued against this notion on the grounds that there can be no action for reasons without language, MacIntyre uses the example of certain species (most importantly of dolphins) to show how animals do exercise a nonlinguistic mode of distinguishing between true and false that the later and distinctively human ability to reflect on and evaluate prelinguistic and nonlinguistic distinction-making builds upon (pp. 36-7). Moreover, the nonlinguistic distinction-making of nonhuman animals is analogous to the prelinguistic stage in the development of human beings from infants to mature practical reasoners and it is precisely this continuity between the nonhuman and the human that renders intelligible human development (p. 56).

It is the transition human beings undergo from infant to independent practical reasoner that occupies the second stage in MacIntyre's account. The transition is characterized by three dimensions that all require the possession of language: the movement from simply having reasons/desires to evaluating them as good or bad and consequently changing them and our actions; learning to cooperate with others in the pursuit of common goods; and the ability to imagine future possibilities. The main work of the transition to independent practical reasoner is the acquisition of those qualities of intellect and character that support practical reason and enable us to pursue the goods that constitute human flourishing: the intellectual and moral virtues. Yet the virtues continue to be important in the sustaining of relationships of giving and receiving that are crucial to the good of mature human beings. So the dependency that characterizes infants and children gives way to an independent ability to reason practically, but we remain in many respects dependent on others with whom we cooperate in various contexts and the relationships through which that cooperation is carried out are also sustained by the virtues.

The third stage of MacIntyre's argument concerns those relationships through which we continue to pursue the goods that constitute human flourishing. Here MacIntyre considers the relationship of rules and virtues in a brief but illuminating account of the natural law as "precepts promulgated by God through reason without conformity to which human beings cannot achieve their common good" (p. 111). He also offers a critique of the ability of rational choice theory to explain the relationships necessary for the common good, emphasizing the importance of the larger context of market relationships, relationships that involve affective and sympathetic ties that are themselves grounded in and "governed by norms of uncalculated and unpredicted giving and receiving" (p. 117) vindicated by his account of human development. This leads to a discussion of what MacIntyre calls the virtues of "acknowledged dependence," the most important example of which is the virtue called misericordia (pity, mercy) by Aquinas and which MacIntyre explains by contrasting it with Aristotle's account of magnanimity. There is also a discussion of the kind of political contexts that can embody the relationships of giving and receiving that allow pursuit of individual and common goods. Here MacIntyre argues that neither the family, which is too small and necessarily influenced by larger forces, nor the modern state, which is too big can do the job. The family is a necessary but not a sufficient context that requires local communities and institutions intermediate between it and the state if the full range of human goods are to be pursued.

Throughout the book MacIntyre pays special attention to the themes of vulnerability, dependence, and animality in human life while revealing important aspects of the rational faculties that differentiate human beings from nonhuman animals. Along the way there are illuminating discussions of parenthood, age, disease, and disability and the book concludes with an account of philosophic inquiry that again pits MacIntyre's Thomistic Aristotelian perspective against that of the philosopher who he still takes to be it's most compelling rival: Nietzsche. While this book is largely without the strong rhetoric that has made some of MacIntyre's earlier work so provocative, its conclusions are every bit as radical, especially as they concern our economic and political institutions. Dependent Rational Animals is a brief and lucid exposition of the current thinking of one of the most important philosophical voices of the second half of the twentieth century. It should not be missed.--V. Bradley Lewis, The Catholic University of America.