The Communitarian Critique: MacIntyre, Sandel, Walzer
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
The Prehistory: Anscombe, Foot, and the Revival of Virtue Ethics
Before MacIntyre opened the great debate in 1981 with After Virtue, two Oxford philosophers had already done the intellectual groundwork: Elizabeth Anscombe (1919–2001) and Philippa Foot (1920–2010). Without their preparatory work, MacIntyre’s intervention would not have been possible.[1]
Elizabeth Anscombe — Wittgenstein’s student, translator, and literary heir — published the epoch-making essay “Modern Moral Philosophy” in 1958.[2] Her thesis was provocative: the whole of modern moral philosophy since the Enlightenment — whether Kantian, utilitarian, or intuitionist — is doomed to failure, because it employs concepts like “duty,” “moral obligation,” and “obligation” that only make sense within a religious context. Without a divine lawgiver, “thou shalt” is an empty concept.
Anscombe’s alternative: a return to Aristotle. Instead of asking after abstract duties, ethics should ask after human excellence — after the virtues that make a good life possible. The central question is not “What ought I to do?” but “How ought I to live?” This requires a philosophy of action and a philosophical psychology — projects that Anscombe herself pursued in Intention (1957).
Philippa Foot developed these ideas further over decades. In essays such as “Moral Beliefs” (1958–59) and “Virtues and Vices” (1978), she argued against emotivism — the view that moral judgments are mere expressions of feeling — and for a naturalism of the virtues.[3] Virtues such as courage, justice, and temperance are not arbitrary cultural constructs but have a grounding in human nature: they are qualities that enable human beings to live well as human beings.
For the reception of Hegel, Anscombe and Foot are important because — without directly invoking Hegel — they revived Hegelian motifs: the critique of the emptiness of formal duty-ethics, the emphasis on concrete forms of life, the integration of ethics and anthropology. Hegel’s critique of Kant’s “morality” in favor of “ethical life” contains structurally the same movement: from abstract principles to concrete virtues, from isolated individuals to communities of practice.
The difference: Anscombe and Foot remain with Aristotle, not with Hegel. They share Hegel’s skepticism toward Kant but not his claim to a history of systems and dialectical mediation. Their virtue approach is pluralistic, not totalizing — which made it compatible with the analytic tradition.
Alasdair MacIntyre: After Virtue (1981)
MacIntyre attacked not only Rawls but the whole of modern moral philosophy. His thesis: the Enlightenment undertook the project of a rational grounding of morality — and it failed. What we have today are fragments: moral concepts that have lost their original context, arguments that cannot convince, a pluralism that is in truth chaos.
The alternative: a return to the Aristotelian tradition. Virtue ethics instead of an ethics of principles. Embeddedness in practices and traditions instead of abstract autonomy. The question is not “Which rule should I follow?” but “What kind of person should I become?”
Hegel appears ambivalent in MacIntyre’s work. On the one hand, he correctly saw the critique of Kant — the emptiness of the categorical imperative, the abstractness of morality. On the other hand, Hegel overvalued the state and undervalued the small communities (family, local traditions). MacIntyre is no Hegelian — but he is Hegel’s ally against Kant.
Michael Sandel: Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982)
Sandel attacked Rawls directly. His thesis: Rawls’ theory presupposes a false picture of the self. The “unencumbered self” — the self detached from all ties, traditions, and communities — is a fiction. No one chooses behind the veil of ignorance, because no one has ever been in that situation.
In reality we are always already embedded: in family, culture, religion, nation. These embeddings are not merely external circumstances from which we can abstract. They constitute who we are. Do not ask, “What would I choose if I did not know who I am?” but rather, “Who am I, and what follows from that?”
This is Hegelian in structure — even though Sandel invokes Aristotle and Heidegger more than Hegel. The critique of the “unencumbered self” is structurally identical to Hegel’s critique of Kant’s “abstract” subject. The concrete subject is socially constituted, shaped by recognition, embedded in ethical life.
Michael Walzer: Spheres of Justice (1983)
Walzer took a different path. He accepted pluralism but criticized Rawls’ universalism. His thesis: there is not one principle of justice but many — depending on the sphere of social life in question.
In the sphere of politics, equality holds — one person, one vote. In the sphere of the economy, achievement holds — whoever works more earns more. In the sphere of the family, love holds — not achievement, not equality. In the sphere of education, competence holds — the best teachers should teach.
Justice means: each sphere has its own logic, and the spheres must remain separate. Injustice arises when the logic of one sphere dominates another — when money buys political power, when political power distributes educational opportunities.
This is functionally Hegelian — even though Walzer invokes the tradition of plural communities. The various “spheres” correspond to Hegel’s different domains of ethical life (family, civil society, state), and the critique of the dominance of one sphere corresponds to Hegel’s critique of the independence of isolated moments.
On the history of the revival of virtue ethics: Roger Crisp, Michael Slote (eds.), Virtue Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, Introduction. ↩︎
G.E.M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” in: Philosophy 33 (1958), pp. 1–19. The essay became the founding document of analytic virtue ethics. ↩︎
The most important essays are collected in: Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell, 1978. Her late work: Natural Goodness, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001. ↩︎