To call Alasdair MacIntyre a reluctant subject would be an oversimplistic reading of his position. The philosophical eminence simply declined to be profiled in this magazine, despite multiple writers’ earnest efforts throughout his long association with Notre Dame.
MacIntyre’s seminal 1981 book, After Virtue, is a philosophical touchstone that has itself been subjected to oversimplistic analysis. The insights in it resist easy categorization or thumbnail synopsis, so he let them speak for themselves. His death in May at age 96 inspired many reflections on his influential thought, now including one in our pages.
In our cover story, Michael Baxter ’83M.Div. dares to distill MacIntyre’s intellectual contributions without diluting their essence. The result validates the wait. At last, a profile in the magazine that captures some of the magnitude and complexity of MacIntyre’s work — no small task. Baxter’s labor to do him justice honors the man.
MacIntyre’s demurrals aside, I’d like to believe he would appreciate such careful posthumous contemplation. He certainly had to know his ideas would long outlive him. They reward close reading and deep thinking — but defy conclusion-jumping.
His point of view is so intricate and layered, his critique of modern society so encompassing that he’s irreducible to the glib divisiveness that constitutes so much public discourse. That alone might be virtue enough to recommend reading MacIntyre these days.
A scholar whose stock-in-trade was in the stacks, he mined the ancient thought that defined his field and limned the contemporary moral order to diagnose modernity. He traced its ills to the atomization of small, cohesive communities with collective values into fragments of individualized — and irreconcilable — personal feelings. Of course, that superficial summary wouldn’t be worthy even of a book jacket blurb; I’ll leave it to Baxter to guide us through the depths of MacIntyre’s mind.
His legacy represents an ideal of academic culture, which has not been held in the highest esteem in recent years. The labor of deepening our knowledge of the world and of ourselves has been caught up in a political morass.
Three stories in this issue document challenges that have arisen from the Trump administration’s cuts to federal research funding and the increased tax on university endowments levied in the budget reconciliation bill Congress passed in July. Notre Dame could be on the hook for a nearly tenfold increase in its tax bill on net investment gains — from an average payment of $12 million over the past five years to as much as $100 million. Associate editor Margaret Fosmoe ’85 explains how the endowment works and the effect of the increased tax on University finances.
Brendan O’Shaughnessy ’93 reports on the Pulte Institute for Global Development’s retrenchment after the termination of more than $20 million in grants from its primary source of research funding, the United States Agency for International Development.
And Jeff Rhoads, Notre Dame’s vice president for research, shares his personal journey and outlines his vision as the University navigates this fraught moment.
Campus leaders point to the example of predecessors who have guided Notre Dame through previous crises. Echoing MacIntyre — if you’ll permit me one last oversimplification — they find the most fruitful path toward a flourishing future in the wisdom of the past.
Jason Kelly is editor of this magazine.