Pluralist Response to MacIntyre’s Critique of Liberalism

This paper questions Alasdair MacIntyre’s critique of contemporary liberal theories and institutions. First part of the paper gives an account of MacIntrye’s critique of the Enlightenment Project and its connection to the liberal project. It also introduced the distinction between monist and pluralist understanding of rationality as a means of clarifying the difference between the Enlightenment liberals and contemporary liberal pluralists. Second part deals With MacIntyre’s argument about the modern notion of the self and tries to draw the difference between emotivist and liberal understanding of the self. In the third part author acknowledges that MacIntyre is right in his critique of the Enlightenment liberals’ claims about the universal principles of justice. However, as liberal pluralism does not rest on the notion of the universal principles of justice, MacIntyre’s critique of liberalism fails to recognize different ways of justifying liberal state