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Alasdair Macintyre and the Academic Layperson: A Short Thread
There& #39;s something charming - and very funny - about the fact that Alasdair Macintyre intended "After Virtue" (AV) and "Whose Justice? Whose Rationality?" (WJWR) to be comprehensible to the layperson (according to the intro to the latter book). 1/
I don& #39;t mean this as criticism of the man, although I suppose I do of both books. AV was bloody hard work, and WJWR only slightly less so. And I& #39;m not exactly a total layperson when it comes to reading moral philosophy. 2/
Now, Macintyre& #39;s commitment to trying to reach a larger audience, and his argument in WJWR that philosophy cannot be just for an elite profession, are both commendable. I& #39;ve also tried to write for a lay audience since my PhD. Like Macintyre, I have failed dismally. 3/
I have read reviews of my monograph that comment on my accessible (or sometimes peculiar, but I think [hope?] that& #39;s what they mean?) style. But I remember reading the 1st para of my book to my Mum & Gran, & both of them laughing and saying they had no idea what I& #39;d just said. 4/
Now, of course, there are tiers of layperson that we might want to reach. Many academics want to speak to specific audiences: professionals, policy-makers, or industrial folk. In my dojo, if my Mum can& #39;t understand it, it& #39;s not clear enough. Punishment is everyone& #39;s business. 5/
Anyhow, back to Macintyre. I think I found his point stuck with me for two reasons. First, because I suspect that he (like me) finds it difficult to imagine a reader with v. little knowledge of the area. Part of how we define knowledge is through taxonomies, systems, schema... 6/
...that are PART OF the traditions of knowledge that create them. That is, HOW to think about knowledge is as much a part of how we construct knowledge as WHAT we construct. And I think lay audiences can struggle with that if the WHAT is framed for them but the HOW isn& #39;t. 7/
With that being said, part of my problem with Macintyre is just the passage of time and the evolution of English language. AV was written in 1981; WJWR in 1987. I was born (sorry to everyone about to feel old) in 1988. And the idiom has undoubtedly moved on since then. 8/
Macintyre favours long, flowing sentences, with lots of clauses and lots of words that frankly, aren& #39;t needed to make sense of the sentence. This is very much part of the style of the time. It& #39;s one reason why Foucault is so hard to read, at least in English... 9/
...Although Macintyre, unlike Foucault, manages to avoid complex jargon and is writing about something that& #39;s easier for your average person to grok, I reckon. Both, if it isn& #39;t clear, are worth the trouble to read. 10/
But part of the trouble is that standards of language change. Try reading Victorian non-fiction - not even academic non-fiction - and see where I& #39;m going with this. So, are academics doomed to forever chase the moving target of lay comprehension? 11/
Probably, honestly. My work will probably seem stilted and archaic in 40-50 years& #39; time. But that doesn& #39;t mean that we can& #39;t chase that moving target. WJWR *is* better written for a lay audience than AV. My monograph *is* better written for a lay audience than my thesis. 12/
Part of why I& #39;ve been thinking about writing so much is that this summer has seemed like an interminable trickle of writing & reviewing academic publications. A lot of my feedback has focused on the quality of writing. But that& #39;s not to say that you are a good or bad writer. 13/
