Family, Practice, and Practical Rationality: A MacIntyrean Account

Alasdair MacIntyre writes about family in various texts, regarding it as playing a key role in our rational development. The assumed view is that MacIntyre regards family as a straightforward practice. In this paper I aim to unsettle this assumed view and by so doing underscore something fundamental about MacIntyre’s approach to practice, practical rationality, and other important questions, at times lost in discussion of his writings. Firstly, I show that while family can and should be seen as a practice as MacIntyre conceptualises it, his writings suggest, also, that it is a practice of a special kind, one that is not straightforward, and a practice not as necessary to rational development and human flourishing as might be assumed. MacIntyre’s approach to practice vis-à-vis other ‘social settings’ in the case of family could also be seen as contradictory. Rather than special or contradictory, however, what MacIntyre writes about family is I argue a nuanced reminder of the interpretivism pervading his writings overall. Indeed, we are reminded by his treatment of family that for MacIntyre important questions, of practice and practical rationality, in part and necessarily involve consideration of how these questions are viewed and seen. This in turn raises a further fundamental question of how it is that we might come to see the world and what it asks of us in MacIntyre’s sense. This crucial question of upbringing and formation I consider with the help of John McDowell’s writings in the last section of the paper.