Aristotlianism in the Western Philosophy of Ethics: MacIntyre's Viewpoints

Aristotle’s ethics is one of the basic elements of his philosophy that by having an important and finality and paying attention to happiness and rational virtues such as wisdom, bravery, temperance and justice has an important place in the western philosophy. This ethical tradition by having very properties in the middle age and encountering divine religions like Christianity and Islam not only did lose its coherence, by acquiring some acceptances from them but it increased its elements and principles, especially in the school of Thomas which increased some Augustine and Christian theology elements by creativity of Thomasism. But in the modern age by changing the man’s relationship with God and the world, ethics acquired another meaning in which man’s emotions and desires was considered as the axis of ethics. In fact reason, that was the axis of ethics and virtues previously, was omitted. We can consider this process in philosophers such as Hume, Reid, Hutchison, Nietzsche, Bentham, Stuart mill and Kant. Hence we can call the modern ethics as Emotional ethics in which ethical statements, are composed of emotions and impressions that we cannot call them true or false.MacIntyre, maintains that the only way for the salvation of the ethics in the west is returning to the ethical tradition of Aristotle, because it is the only tradition which, by paying attention to the end and relying on the rational virtues for reaching real happiness, has this capability although we can find some defects in it.