In memoriam: Alasdair MacIntyre, the Rev. John A. O’Brien senior research professor of philosophy emeritus
Alasdair MacIntyre, the Rev. John A. O’Brien senior research professor of philosophy emeritus and a permanent senior distinguished research fellow at the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, died on May 21, 2025. He was 96.
Widely regarded as the most important figure in modern virtue ethics, MacIntyre, a native of Glasgow, Scotland, was educated at Queen Mary College, London, and earned master’s degrees from the University of Manchester and the University of Oxford. He moved to the United States in the late 1960s and went on to teach at Brandeis University, Boston University, Wellesley College, Vanderbilt University and Duke University. In addition, he served as a visiting faculty member at Princeton University and Yale University and as a senior research fellow at London Metropolitan University’s Centre for Contemporary Aristotelian Studies in Ethics and Politics. He joined the faculty of Notre Dame in 1985 and was granted emeritus status in 2010. Following his retirement from teaching, MacIntyre remained domiciled at the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture as a permanent senior distinguished research fellow, where he continued to write and deliver an annual keynote address at the de Nicola Center’s Fall Conference through 2022.
“Alasdair MacIntyre demonstrated scholarly rigor and an alpine clarity of thought,” said Jennifer Newsome Martin, director of the de Nicola Center and the John J. Cavanaugh Associate Professor of the Humanities at the University of Notre Dame. “He was also a generous friend of the de Nicola Center in his years as our permanent senior distinguished research fellow in residence; what an honor it was that he chose the dCEC to be the locus of his scholarly work after retiring from the philosophy department at Notre Dame. We are all bereft at his passing.”
MacIntyre wrote or edited more than 23 books, including “After Virtue” (1981), the widely influential study of virtue ethics for which he is best known. That landmark work was followed by “Whose Justice? Which Rationality?” (1988), “Dependent Rational Animals” (1999), and “Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity” (2016), in addition to several collections of essays and public talks, including his 1988 Gifford Lectures published as “Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry” (1990). He was a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, member and former president of the American Philosophical Association, the British Academy, the Royal Irish Academy and the American Philosophical Society.
“Alasdair MacIntyre’s widespread impact on the world of ideas is impossible to overstate. We will be reading and learning from him for centuries to come,” said O. Carter Snead, the Charles E. Rice Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame and former director of the de Nicola Center. “I owe him a deep personal debt of gratitude for his generosity to me as a mentor and treasured colleague at the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. I will leave it to others to explore at length Alasdair’s unparalleled and sui generis intellectual legacy; instead, I would like to recall Alasdair's beautiful and inspiring personal concern for the flourishing of the people in his daily life. In our many conversations over the years he never missed an opportunity to inquire with genuine concern about my family and, in particular, our children. I will miss him dearly.”
John O’Callaghan, an associate professor of philosophy at Notre Dame and faculty fellow at the de Nicola Center, said, “When I think of Alasdair MacIntyre, I think of two words: gracious and humble. Not many will be surprised to hear him described as gracious, for many there are who benefited tremendously from his help and encouragement, me among them. But even more may be surprised, even shocked, to hear me describe him as humble. No doubt, when he entered the ring, he was intimidating, tenacious and at times even ferocious. But I was privileged to see his humility standing before the truth. If you want to know if someone loves the truth, look to their humility, their willingness to put their thoughts to the test and criticism of others, even others like me who found themselves stunned to have a great philosopher ask them to ‘comment on a draft of something I’m writing.’ Humility. Alasdair MacIntyre, gracious, humble and true.”
Martin concluded, “The academy, the University and the de Nicola Center are in Alasdair’s debt. His tremendous legacy, however, will continue to reverberate in the life of the Center, especially in its historic emphasis on traditions-based inquiry, in the habits of virtuous thought and practice cultivated in our integral student formation program and in the rich intellectual community and vigorous exchange of ideas for which his voice was so fundamental.”
Originally published by at ethicscenter.nd.edu on May 23, 2025.
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