Writing as social disclosure

a hundred years ago and now

Alasdair MacIntyre

pp. 99-115

in: Allyn Fives, Keith Breen (eds), Philosophy and political engagement, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Abstract

In this chapter, MacIntyre examines whether writing still functions as a form of social disclosure. His thesis is that academic philosophers now, in the main, give us little reason to make thought about poverty central to our lives, let alone to be affronted or disquieted by it. We no longer see the gross inequalities of our economic system as a practical denial of our common humanity. MacIntyre contrasts our current situation with the debate about poverty at the start of the twentieth century, a debate in which the writings of George Bernard Shaw and G.K. Chesterton were central. MacIntyre argues that this public debate was philosophical, but not academic, and one in which poverty was recognised as a great evil.

Cited authors

Shaw George Bernard