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Full Idea
The sophist tradition failed to distinguish the difference between the concept of a man who stands outside and is able to question the conventions of some one given social order, and the concept of a man who stands outside social life as such.
Gist of Idea
Sophists don't distinguish a person outside one social order from someone outside all order
Source
Alasdair MacIntyre (A Short History of Ethics [1967], Ch. 3)
Book Ref
MacIntyre,Alasdair: 'A Short History of Ethics' [Routledge 1967], p.18
A Reaction
A very nice distinction. Compare foreigners in Athens with Diogenes of Sinope, who renounced all cities. This is the germ of MacIntyre's view that morality is essentially dependent on some sort of social order. He is a reviver of virtue theory.
| 8001 | 'Dikaiosune' is justice, but also fairness and personal integrity [MacIntyre] |
| 8002 | Sophists don't distinguish a person outside one social order from someone outside all order [MacIntyre] |
| 8006 | When Aristotle speaks of soul he means something like personality [MacIntyre] |
| 8005 | 'Happiness' is a bad translation of 'eudaimonia', which includes both behaving and faring well [MacIntyre] |
| 8008 | The Bible is a story about God in which humans are incidental characters [MacIntyre] |
| 8012 | The value/fact logical gulf is misleading, because social facts involve values [MacIntyre] |
| 8013 | In the Reformation, morality became unconditional but irrational, individually autonomous, and secular [MacIntyre] |
| 8021 | The Levellers and the Diggers mark a turning point in the history of morality [MacIntyre] |
| 8022 | I am naturally free if I am not tied to anyone by a contract [MacIntyre] |
| 8023 | My duties depend on my identity, which depends on my social relations [MacIntyre] |
| 8031 | Fans of natural rights or laws can't agree on what the actual rights or laws are [MacIntyre] |