Culture, Tradition and Translation in the Philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre

• Authors: Filipczuk M. , Filipczuk M.
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

A specific form of relativism characteristic for Alasdair MacIntyre's philosophy is discussed in the paper. The authors focus on mutual translatability between languages in the context of conceptual schemes connected with tradition constituted moral enquiry. They locate the source of MacIntyre's relativism in incommensurability of various conceptual schemes and discuss the chances of its overcoming. They address their attention to two claims made by MacIntyre: a weaker one (i) that there does not exist a language that would be neutral with respect to non-linguistic reality, and a stronger one (ii) that non-linguistic reality does not exist at all. Consequently the choice of language predetermines the body of truths that can be expressed in that language. A gradual improvement of descriptive adequacy is however possible. MacIntyre points out that it is always possible to adopt a new language that enables a better description of some moral problems, especially when the traditional language is unable to deal with some aspects of moral dilemmas. To this strategy he adds another. It is also possible to learn a new language as a 'second-first-language'. The ultimate goal of the paper is to assess these proposals.

Keywords

EN

CONCEPTUAL SCHEMES; INCOMMENSURABILITY; SECOND-FIRST-LANGUAGE; TRADITION-CONSTITUTED-MORAL-ENQUIRY

Discipline

• PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk
• Journal: Przegląd Filozoficzny. Nowa Seria
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 17
• Issue: 3(67)
• Pages: 21-31
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Filipczuk M.

author

Filipczuk M.

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

09PLAAAA064013