Poore Gregory S
Shorter University, Rome, Georgia, USA
J Med Philos. 2014 Aug;39(4):459-73. doi: 10.1093/jmp/jhu027. Epub 2014 Jun 26.
In Dependent Rational Animals, Alasdair MacIntyre attempts to ground the virtues in a biological account of humans. Drawing from this attempt, he also tries to answer the question of why we should care for the severely disabled. MacIntyre's difficulty in answering this question begins with the fact that his communities of practices do not naturally include the severely disabled within their membership and care. In response to this difficulty, he provides four reasons for why we should care for the severely disabled. I argue that three of these reasons are inadequate, and that the fourth is incomplete although it does point in a promising direction. I conclude that a more satisfactory answer requires a further extension of the central development from After Virtue to Dependent Rational Animals, and I draw from Wendell Berry, whose work MacIntyre admires, to provide an illuminating illustration of what such an answer might look like.
在《依赖理性的动物》一书中，阿拉斯戴尔·麦金太尔试图从人类的生物学角度来奠定美德的基础。基于这一尝试，他还试图回答我们为何应该关爱重度残疾人这一问题。麦金太尔在回答这个问题时遇到的困难始于这样一个事实，即他的实践社群在其成员构成和关怀范围内自然并不包括重度残疾人。针对这一困难，他给出了四条我们应该关爱重度残疾人的理由。我认为其中三条理由并不充分，第四条理由虽然指向了一个有前景的方向，但并不完整。我的结论是，一个更令人满意的答案需要对从《追寻美德》到《依赖理性的动物》的核心发展进行进一步拓展，并且我借鉴了麦金太尔欣赏的温德尔·贝里的作品，以提供一个关于这样一个答案可能是什么样的有启发性的例证。
