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The link between Ralph Waldo Emerson and Alisdair MacIntyre begins with one question: who are you? This inquiry, to which both men have alluded above, will be the cornerstone of their respective philosophical journeys. Emerson, a New England academic who wrote in the mid-Nineteenth Century, and MacIntyre, a contemporary British philosopher, have ostensibly little in common. However, it is in their criticism of liberal society, and their prescription for a necessary change, that MacIntyre and Emerson share more than a common interest; together, they seek to save contemporary morality from its downward spiral into obscurity and irrelevance. More than a century divides Emerson and MacIntyre, but the fate of the liberal tradition, and the future of the American political experiment, may lie in their mutual cooperation.

MacIntyre begins his book After Virtue with a frightening allegory. He describes a world in which the people have dismantled the natural sciences violently, swiftly, and systematically. Then, he asks, what if that society—many years later—tried to rebuild a system of sciences that was based only on the fragmented ruins of this violent destruction? How could a new science ever regain what had been lost? How could it fill in the voids? How could the people recreate the vast tomes of knowledge that had been destroyed? MacIntyre’s answer is that a new science built on such empirical rubble might look and feel like the original, but it wouldn’t be the same. To attempt to build such a new discipline based on a foundation of evidentiary scraps and intellectual remnants would be a fool’s errand and a hollow pursuit. He goes on to state that, “The hypothesis which I wish to advance is that in the actual world which we inhabit the language of morality is in the same state of grave disorder as the language of natural science in the imaginary world which I described.”3

MacIntyre’s thesis is that the moral structures that emerged from the Enlightenment, or the “Enlightenment Project,” were philosophically doomed from the start because they were formed using the disordered and incoherent language of morality mentioned above.4 While the Enlightenment’s philosophers, to include Kierkegaard, Kant, and Hume, were generally rigorous in their studies and academically thorough enough to formulate complex intellectual ideas, MacIntyre’s argument is that they “…fail because of certain shared characteristics deriving from their highly specific historical background.”5 The shared historical background of which he speaks is the destruction of classical Greek morality amid the superstition and intellectual plundering of the Dark Ages of Western Europe. Emerging at the other end of the Dark Ages was merely evidence of the erstwhile morality but not the theory itself. The result was a vocabulary list with few definitions and no context to explain itself. Consequently, the philosophers of the Enlightenment and their successors were doomed to operate within an incomplete, and incorrect, framework of moral understanding.6

Ralph Waldo Emerson approaches morality from a significantly different viewpoint than MacIntyre does. As an American philosopher, one who is often (and improperly) ideologically associated with Stoicism, Transcendentalism, and other romantic movements of the Nineteenth Century, Emerson would likely be subject to MacIntyre’s disapproval in the same way that other post-Enlightenment philosophers are. However, Emerson’s writings were largely in reaction to the moral incoherence of the post-Enlightenment world, specifically the Calvinist tradition and the political and social changes of the mid-1800’s.7 “Self-Reliance,” probably Emerson’s most famous essay, implores the American people to reflect, as individuals, on the state of their lives and of society. His famous line, “Whoso would be a man must be a noncomformist,” is aggressive in encouraging dissent from social norms.8 Without the benefit of MacIntyre’s complex understanding of Aristotelian virtue, Emerson observed that the results of morality from the liberal tradition were both inconsistent and undesirable.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate an alternative to the status quo morality in the United States. Using MacIntyre’s thesis as a foundation, it will both examine moral progress in the Twentieth Century and look to Emerson as a philosopher for the future. MacIntyre presents his readers with the stark moral choice of “Nietzsche or Aristotle” in Chapter 9 of After Virtue.9 It will be my contention that a scrutinous reading of Emerson will reveal his philosophy to be Aristotelian in nature, and thus a potentially viable answer to MacIntyre’s ultimatum.

In the first section, I examine the need for morality, followed by a detailed explanation of MacIntyre’s framework and his two choices, Nietzsche and Aristotle. In the second section, I look to Alexis de Tocqueville and theories of civil society to explain the emergence of emotivism in the Twentieth Century as a result of the failings of the Enlightenment. In the third and final section, I look to Emerson as a beacon of hope for American morality, as per MacIntyre’s guidelines and Tocqueville’s observations.

The Case For Morality

Saint Thomas Aquinas stated in his “Commentary on the Politics of Aristotle” that, “It is clear that political science, which is concerned with the ordered relationship between men, belongs not to the realm of making or factitive science or mechanical art, but rather to that of doing or the moral sciences.”10 Just as Aquinas stated hundreds of years ago, adherence to a moral foundation remains of utmost importance to the survival of a political state.

In the liberal tradition morality takes on an especially important role. John Locke, whose writings are integral to the liberal political philosophy in the United States, provides great help in emphasizing this point. As all Americans are aware, the Lockean tradition holds that, “We must consider that what State all Men are naturally in, and that is, a State of perfect Freedom to order their Actions, and dispose of their possessions…A State also of Equality, wherein all the Power and Jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another.”11 To the citizen of a democracy, this seems fundamental and integral to the conception of humankind. But the philosopher must ask “Why?” Why, indeed, are all men in a state of perfect freedom, and why are all men in a state of equality? The only answer that Locke provides, and the one answer that truly supports the ideology of liberalism, is that God has placed man in the state of nature. Before societies, before communities, before governments and even before families, God has given each and every person on Earth the freedom and equality to be the master of his domain. And so when the Constitution asserts, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal…” it is only to the believer in God that such an assumption would be self-evident or even relevant at all.

The pursuant question, then, is what happens when liberals in the classical tradition cease to believe in Locke’s God? What if, over time, concepts of religion and Christianity and God were to wither on the vine and die? MacIntyre provides an enlightening analogy in the story of the Polynesian people of the South Pacific and their taboos. He explains that when taboos—or behaviors that were considered to be normatively wrong and thus unacceptable in society—were removed by King Kamehameha II during the “modernization” of the Polynesian culture, the people had no difficulty abandoning them. One would think that the taboos, which were a longstanding cultural tradition, would be incredibly difficult to eliminate; yet Kamehameha abolished them without incident or resistance. The Polynesians had no trouble abandoning their widely held and longstanding cultural practices. MacIntyre explains that the reason they were able to do this as a society with such surprising ease was that the Polynesians had forgotten the underlying reasons for their own taboos. The rules existed, and were followed, but carried no spiritual or didactic purpose. The taboos were guidelines without meaning and rules without warrant. They held no metaphysical value in the eyes of the Polynesian culture and were thus abandoned easily.12

Much like the taboos of Polynesia, if Enlightenment-based principles such as freedom, equality, and sovereignty of the individual lost their religious meaning—and thus their value—they would eventually be abandoned. In The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky recognizes the importance of belief as the functional cornerstone of Christian societies: “If it were not for the Church of Christ there would be nothing to restrain the criminal from evil-doing, no real punishment. The mechanical punishment…in the majority of cases only embitters the heart. It is not the real punishment. The only effectual one, the only deterrent and softening one, lies in the recognition of sin by conscience.”13 The impact, as Dostoyevsky has observed, of abandoning religion in a Christian society would be the elimination of moral judgment and criminal deterrence.

In his work The Future of an Illusion, Sigmund Freud makes a similar observation. “If the sole reason why you must not kill your neighbor,” he states, “is because God has forbidden it and will severely punish you for it in this or the next life—then, when you learn that there is no God and that you need not fear His punishment, you will certainly kill your neighbour without hesitation…”14 Again we can see in Freud the understanding that post-Enlightenment morality is hinged on a belief in God as the arbiter of moral judgment.

Dostoyevsky and Freud both propose solutions to the moral conundrum they describe. For Dostoyevsky, the survival of Western society necessitates a rediscovery of religion. Freud quite differently advances the idea that modern science, as an objective truth, can provide the ordering rules for society that religion can no longer fulfill.15 My interest is not in advancing either of these solutions. Rediscovering Christianity, as Dostoyevsky would prefer, does not worsen the problems of the post-Enlightenment moral structure; it might in fact serve to reinsert meaning into the principles that order modern society. However, it cannot provide a satisfactory moral framework for those who refuse to rediscover God or for those who worship outside of the Christian tradition. In a society of religious toleration, proposing religious rediscovery as the solution to the endemic moral crisis is desperately inadequate. Similarly, Freud’s optimistic faith in science falls well short of a coherent moral paradigm. Some scientific advancements, such as an understanding of genetics and DNA, might serve to justify the existence of liberal equality as an abstract concept, but the changing nature of science and its persistent controversy renders it an incomplete, and unclear, answer to the problem.

While Dostoyevsky and Freud cannot solve the project of rediscovering liberal morality, their observations on the necessity of morals in society, and the necessity of God in liberal morality, remain urgently accurate. Morality provides society with its concepts of right and wrong, it precipitates principles and laws of behavior, and it justifies the existence of the liberal state. As American society drifts further and further away from its conception of God, its fundamental beliefs are becoming dangerously close to taboos. Without morality, liberal society cannot sustain itself in perpetuity. Unlike Freud and Dostoyevsky, Alisdair MacIntyre might be able to propose a palatable sustenance.

MacIntyre’s Model

Alisdair MacIntyre takes advantage of Friedrich Nietzsche’s thorough indictment of liberal morality. It is through Nietzsche’s logic that MacIntyre advances the allegory of the Polynesian taboos, and it is because of Nietzsche that MacIntyre must look for a moral alternative to post-Enlightenment philosophy. Ultimately, MacIntyre will advance that only classic Aristotelian thought can hope to save Western humanity from the clinch of Nietzsche’s stranglehold.

Nietzsche

First, it is important to understand Nietzsche’s criticisms of morality. “The underlying structure of [Nietzsche’s] logic is as follows: if there is nothing to morality but expressions of will, my morality can only be what my will creates…there can be no place for such fictions as natural rights, utility, the greatest happiness for the greatest number.”16 Here, MacIntyre describes the crux of Nietzsche’s argument as a criticism of moral subjectivity. The Enlightenment project, MacIntyre argues, went fundamentally wrong when it ascribed moral agency to the individual.17 In doing so, modern morality became nothing more than one man’s opinion on what “the good” for humans might be.18 Thus, philosophy became a forum of rules and principles—created by individuals and without a clear conception of why a particular rule should be followed and another rejected. The emergence of secular morality throughout the Enlightenment eliminated God as the source of morality; as a result, only subjective and narrowly crafted understandings of human nature could inform subsequent philosophy.19

Understanding that post-Enlightenment philosophy had been secularized, Nietzsche sets out to eliminate Europe’s illusions that God, or Christianity, had played a significant role in the development of morality. “Men, not noble enough to see the abysmally different order of rank, chasm of rank, between man and man—such men have so far held sway over the fate of Europe…with their ‘equal before God’ until finally a smaller, almost ridiculous type, a herd animal, something eager to please, sickly, and mediocre has been bred, the European of today—”20 Nietzsche here importantly notes that philosophers, like Locke, had referred to God in advancing whatever rules or maxims they thought were best suited to “the human good,” but were in reality only promulgating whatever school of thought suited their individual views of the world. Contemporary Europeans, Nietzsche claims, had thus been duped by their philosophers into believing that morality had some divine or heavenly source. For Nietzsche, because the philosophers who descended from the Enlightenment made no attempt to contextualize within a framework of “the truth” or “the ideal human condition,” truth did not in fact exist at all.21 Indeed, because the Enlightenment project gave moral agency to the individual and not a society, even a philosophy rooted in an individual’s genuine theological beliefs was nothing more than his own personal musings on life. In doing away with the universal context—the metaphysical—and replacing it with an individual’s right to assert his own interpretation of morality, the Enlightenment invalidated any man’s claim to righteousness over another.

Nietzsche’s personal crusade was to convince the world that post-Enlightenment morality had little or nothing to do with Christian theology. It is for this reason that MacIntyre calls Nietzsche the “King Kamehameha II of the European tradition.”22 As Nietzsche was prepared to expose individualist morality as nothing more than an expression of the will to gain power, he wanted to eliminate the contrived taboos of this morality. Nietzsche’s vision of the future, without Christianity as a false pretense, was radically different from anything the world had seen. He envisioned Uebermensch (men of exceptional genius) would emerge to advance civilization to a heightened state of being. MacIntyre explains that, “Nietzschean man, the Uebermensch, [is] the man who transcends, finds his good nowhere in the social world to date, but only that in himself which dictates his own new law and his own new table of the virtues.”23

If Nietzsche would succeed in his critique of all previous forms of morality, his vision of the future would be wholly disastrous. He harbored a strong disbelief in the equality of mankind, thinking of most common people as “herd animals” to be manipulated.24 Additionally, Nietzsche was strongly anti-Semitic, referring to the Jewish people as, “a people born for slavery.”25 If Nietzsche’s world were to be realized, concepts of equality and justice would be eliminated, along with the institution of Christianity. MacIntyre, who describes Nietzsche’s vision of the future as an “absurd and dangerous fantasy,” concedes that Nietzsche’s critique of post-Enlightenment subjective morality, or “emotivism,” is absolutely correct.26 For this reason, MacIntyre must search for an alternative to Nietzsche; he knows and fears the implications of a Nietzschean world. In the classical Greek philosophy of Aristotle, MacIntyre eventually finds his moral refuge.

Nietzsche does not attack Greek philosophy with the venom with which he debunks modernist claims of morality. In fact, MacIntyre points out that, “Nietzsche rarely refers explicitly to Aristotle except on aesthetic questions…but his interpretation of the history of morality makes it quite clear that the Aristotelian account of ethics and politics would have to rank for Nietzsche with all those degenerate disguises of the will to power…”27 And does this cursory treatment succeed in defeating Aristotelian morality as soundly as he defeats the modernists? The answer, according to MacIntyre, is no. Because of important differences between the structure and assumptions of Aristotelian and post-Enlightenment philosophy, Nietzsche’s critique does not hold water.28 The result is that Aristotle provides a coherent moral framework with which to confront Nietzsche.

Aristotle

If MacIntyre’s project with morality—and consequently my own project with Emerson—is to succeed, Greek philosophy must not fall victim to Nietzsche’s indictment of the Enlightenment. “Aristotelianism is philosophically the most powerful of pre-modern modes of moral thought,” MacIntyre explains, “If a premodern view of morals and politics is to be vindicated against modernity, it will be in something like Aristotelian terms or not at all.”29 Therefore, MacIntyre has selected Aristotle’s framework—or a framework that closely approximates Aristotle—within which to confront Nietzsche.

There are many important differences between Aristotelian philosophy and post-Enlightenment modernism, the most important of which is that Greek morality is teleological.30 In my above discussion of Nietzsche’s accusations about modernism, I mentioned the secularization of morality during the Enlightenment. Corresponding with this secularization was the abandonment of teleology—in favor of fragmented individualism—as the framework wherein “the good” of humanity might discovered.31

Teleology, in general terms, is the belief that there is a difference between “man-as-he-happens-to-be and man-as-he-could-be-if-he-realized-his-essential-nature;” it is the understanding that mankind works to achieve some good—some telos—that is natural and intrinsic to the order of the universe.32 The telos is both the achievement of “the good” and the process of achieving it; MacIntyre explains that, “It is true that the good life which is the telos culminates in the contemplation of the divine and therefore, for Aristotle…the good life moves to a climax.”33 Additionally, the telos is not a static ideal; it is something that must be learned throughout life. An Aristotelian would understand that,

This quest is the search to find the good life—it is the telos itself. The Greeks used this telos as the concept for what a human life should become. When they eliminated the telos, the philosophers of the enlightenment did not replace it with a new Christian concept of teleology, but instead left no criteria at all for what “the good” might be. It all became subjective, and as such, meaningless from person to person.35

Virtues, for Aristotle, are the means by which a person may fulfill their telos. In order to understand Aristotle’s account of morality, it is critical to understand the classic Greek conception of virtue. In classical thought, virtue has a very different meaning than it does for philosophers of the Enlightenment. The first key distinction between the two schools of thought is the relationship between virtue and principles. MacIntyre reports that John Rawls, a contemporary modernist philosopher in the Enlightenment tradition, describes virtue as, “Strong and normatively effective desires to act on the basic principles of right.”36 This conception of virtue is dependent on a previously contrived set of principles. Thus in order to have virtue, or to attain virtue, in a post-Enlightenment framework, one must subscribe to “principles of right” that are inherently subjective. The failure of the Enlightenment, as MacIntyre and Nietzsche point out, is that moral principles were created by individuals operating without an essential context for their existence.37 Additionally, without the teleological desire to understand mankind as he should be (the essence of human nature), Enlightenment principles—and consequently virtues—had no rational basis for existence.38

By contrast, Aristotelian virtues are constructed as the human characteristics and qualities which, if achieved, would allow mankind to live the good life according to the telos. That is not to say that Greek society operated without rules or principles; to the contrary, some societies of the time were highly regulated—the city of Sparta was famous for its tight control of the population. These laws, however, were based on conceptions of virtue; principles derived from a desire to live teleologically.39

This conception of virtue causes Aristotle’s morality to beg the question, “who should I be,” and not, “what should I do?”40 In contrast, post-Enlightenment thought contends that virtues should be followed for simply the sake of following the virtues—for behaving in a certain way, instead of striving to be a certain way or to become a certain kind of person.41 The Enlightenment way of looking at the situation is derived from the importance placed on the individual as morally autonomous. Without a conception of society or community, it is difficult to understand one’s virtues in the context of anything greater than the self, and resultantly, it is difficult to conceptualize virtues as anything greater than individual and subjective guidelines for how to behave.

The crucial distinction is that for Aristotle, virtues—and morality in general—were necessarily a social good. The telos was derived from tradition and communal understanding. So, then, were virtues. MacIntyre comments that,

Virtue, then, and all of morality, is a social concept for Aristotle. More importantly, it is a locally social concept—one which is defined by a particular community or city. Thus the conception of the telos, and the subsequent virtues to which humans should strive in abiding by the telos, would therefore be different from city to city.43 The idea of universalization of virtues was absent from the Aristotelian system; one could not conjecture on universal virtues because one could not remove himself from the telos. It would be impossible to gain “objectivity,” because in Greek morality there is no way to be anything but inescapably part of the teleological framework. “In heroic society,” MacIntyre asserts, “there is no ‘outside’ except for the stranger. A man who tried to withdraw himself from his given position…would be engaged in the enterprise of trying to make himself disappear…”44

There are consequences to this social conception of morality. First, it assumes the existence of a community. Secondly, it assumes that within the community, enough tradition and continuity exists so as to establish a teleological framework and abide by it. Third, within a given society different social classes and orders exist; thus, the virtues for different people would be different, depending on their social position.45 In Aristotelian morality, each member of a community must abide by the telos—and strive to attain their respective virtues—because an individual conception of “the good” would not be enough to sustain any kind of continuity or unity within a society.46 For this reason, it is important to constantly challenge and question the telos and the virtues, both as a society and as individuals, and to continually reconceptualize each man’s role in it.47 People are bound to the telos, but as MacIntyre asserts, “He or she is what society takes him to be. But he or she is not only what society takes him or her to be; he or she both belongs to a place in the social order and transcends it.”48

Therefore, Aristotle’s framework was relative and dynamic; this is very different from the nature of post-Enlightenment philosophy, which gave moral agency to the individual, and allowed the individual to construct rules and principles from this newfound autonomy. Not only did Emmanuel Kant conceive universal rules for behavior, but also he did not allow for them to undergo scrutiny or change. The static nature of the post-Enlightenment philosophy has ironically resulted in so many “absolute” paradigms of morality that it is far less consistent than the Aristotelian model, which allows change from within a given telos. Kant’s deontology and John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism are nearly opposite in principle—but they both stem from the dismissal of teleology and the elevation of the individual.49 As a result, they both fall to Nietzsche’s critique.

In summary, there are several important distinctions between Aristotelian morality and the morality of the Enlightenment. Aristotle’s philosophy is teleological in its assumptions about man-as-he-should-be and its distinction from man-as-he-happens-to-be. Enlightenment philosophy, on the other hand, makes no attempt to look into what the good life is or how man should attain it; in place of teleology, it offers no metaphysical framework whatsoever. Also, for Aristotle, rules are based on virtues, which are derived from an understanding of the telos; the Enlightenment reversed this and predicated virtues on an understanding of subjective (but purported to be universal) principles. The third significant distinction is that for Aristotle, virtue and morality are integral parts of society, as an understanding of the telos must be social and not individual. For the Enlightenment, however, societies lose their moral authority; the individual becomes the fundamental interpreter of moral questions. In the words of renowned Enlightenment philosopher Rene Descartes, “I think, therefore I am.”

Nietzsche and Aristotle

Because of the fundamental differences between the Enlightenment and Aristotle’s conception of morality, Nietzsche’s criticism of the Enlightenment does not work against Aristotle. To review, Nietzsche denied the existence of any truth because the post-Enlightenment philosophers did not have a metaphysical framework within which to operate; their moral instructions were nothing more than assertions of what they felt or wanted to think.50 Nietzsche observed that the Enlightenment challenged human kind to follow rules, and not to strive for excellence in the human condition.51 However, because Aristotelian philosophy is teleological and metaphysical, it provides a social framework from which virtues, and hence principals, could be derived. Additionally, the virtues were concepts that would allow man to fully realize his potential, not merely guidelines for how to live. These fundamental distinctions preserve Aristotle from the maelstrom of Nietzsche’s attack.

MacIntyre goes further in his comparison between Aristotle and Nietzsche. Not only is classic Greek morality competitive with Nietzsche, says MacIntyre, it actually defeats Nietzsche. Specifically, MacIntyre asserts that Nietzsche defeats himself.52 MacIntyre advances that Nietzsche’s thorough and devastating deconstruction of the Enlightenment is not a new philosophy with which to contend but is instead the natural extension of the Enlightenment itself.53 “Nietzsche replaces the fictions of the Enlightenment individualism, of which he is so contemptuous, with a set of individualist fictions of his own;” the uebermensch, the natural geniuses who would rise up to take control of humanity, were nothing more than a subjective construction of Nietzsche’s will.54 Nietzsche’s solution to the lies of the Enlightenment is simply to create a new set of subjective lies; they are more dramatic, but no better, than the assertions of Kant or Mill.

Nietzsche’s fundamental flaw is to neglect the role of society in the formation and understanding of tradition and morality. “[Nietzsche’s] great man,” explains MacIntyre, “cannot enter into relationships meditated by appeal to shared standards or virtues or goods; he is his own only moral authority and his relationships to others have to be exercises of that authority…it will be to condemn oneself to that moral solipsism which constitutes Nietzschean greatness.”55 And so, in the end, only Aristotle offers a viable and rational moral framework from which to understand the human experience.

The next phase of my project

Alisdair MacIntyre has been able to articulate why only Aristotelian virtue defeats Nietzsche, but that hardly offers a solution for the American society of today. St. Thomas Aquinas, writing in the tradition of Aristotle, states, “Virtue builds up the good life. But what is good? Above all, it must be measured by the final purpose and end of human life, and by nothing less.”56 So, what is the final purpose and end of human life? What is our telos, now that we know that Nietzsche was merely the deconstruction of a flawed philosophy? Shall we look to ancient Greece? Which city should we get our virtues from—Athens, Sparta, Thebes? Whose teleology makes the most sense? Perhaps we should go with Aquinas, and state that the purpose of human life is to live according to the will of God. (That might satisfy Fyodor Dostoyevsky). And what about the Aristotelian concept of social class, of aristocracy? Should we prevent social mobility? Should we put an end to the American dream?

I assert that changing moral paradigms is not as easy as changing one’s underwear or changing the bedpan after a long night. It is, in fact, a monumental challenge that may be only conceivable in the realm of philosophy or theory. MacIntyre himself acknowledges problems with the compatibility of Aristotle and modern life. To begin with, Aristotle’s belief in the variability of virtues based on social class leads him to defend slavery—something which MacIntyre, and much of the modern world to include the American state and this author, contends is indefensible.57 Additionally, to understand the Aristotelian teleology exactly as the Greeks did, one would have to agree with Aristotle’s belief in metaphysical biology.58 The advances in modern science have rendered that option both implausible and undesirable.

It is my contention that American society can move beyond these difficulties and begin to reconceptualize the basis of its morality. It may not be exactly as Aristotle envisioned, but a thorough reading of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s philosophy reveals that not only does he agree enough with Aristotle on many of the fundamentals of morality and virtue to defeat Nietzsche, but his political beliefs and status as a uniquely American voice make him an ideal starting point for a new American morality.

Tocqueville

Before I jump into Emerson, it will be useful to review in more depth the unraveling of the “taboos” of American culture. In exploring the impact of Nietzsche’s revelations on our society, we also look to those aspects of American society that bore some resemblance to classic Aristotelian thought, and what Nietzsche’s critique did to unravel those as well. Contemporary American society has not only moved away from God in exactly the way that Nietzsche predicted, but it has largely abandoned those remnants of Aristotelianism that survived the Enlightenment. The confluence of Nietzsche’s philosophy and the changing nature of the American state has resulted in the unique and difficult moral quagmire in which we find ourselves today.

A writer with immense insight on American society in the mid-Nineteenth Century—just before Nietzsche came on the scene—is Alexis de Tocqueville. His observations on how and why American society functioned as it did, and the institutions and practices that perpetuated morality in the United States, are very relevant to the investigation of Aristotle’s presence in pre-emotivist American society. MacIntyre’s thesis advanced that vestiges of the old morality did survive in practice, if not theory, in spite of the Enlightenment; Tocqueville shows us that those remnants had an important impact on the practices of American democracy.

Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat who spent only nine months of his life in the United States, wrote what is considered to be the most authoritative book on American government in his two-volume work Democracy in America. In their introduction to Tocqueville’s book, translators Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop assert that, “Democracy in America is at once the best book ever written on Democracy and the best book ever written on America.”59 These insights on democracy, America, and most especially American democracy, reveal the vestiges of Aristotelian philosophy throughout American society.

When Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s, he made the following observation on the impact of democracy on a people:

This observation on democracy shows the impact of the Enlightenment’s shift to moral autonomy of the individual. Democracy, with its roots firmly planted in John Locke’s philosophy, has eliminated the need for the kinds of Aristotelian communities that sustained classic Greek teleology. Without the need for community, Tocqueville observes, the citizens of democracy become isolated, lonely, and complacent. They become classic post-enlightenment individuals. They have no need for community, and community has no need for them. It is clear, upon reading Tocqueville’s account of democracy, that Aristotelian morality would be incompatible with this type of political structure.

But wait, says Tocqueville, I’m not done. American democracy is different. It is not the society described above; instead, the United States is a nation full of engaged, active communities with traditions and a caring population. “The Americans have combated the individualism to which equality gives birth with freedom, and they have defeated it…”61 Somehow, Americans were able to create a functional society in the face of democracy’s tendency to isolate its citizens.

The solution that the United States found, argues Tocqueville, the one protection that the people had from becoming completely solipsistic, was the development of a strong civil society. The free institutions and associations that comprise civil society, Tocqueville explained, ensured the moral strength and autonomy of the people:

As such, Tocqueville explains the role of civil society in creating communities within the Unites States. These communities were held together by the bonds of free institutions and associations. They were communities with tradition and human bonds, with great potential for developing an Aristotelian telos.

Of all the institutions that performed the function of bringing the people together, none were as significant for Tocqueville as religion. In Volume 1 of Democracy in America, he states that, “Freedom sees in religion the companion of its struggles and triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, the divine source of its rights. It considers religion as the safeguard of its mores; and mores as the guarantee of laws and the pledge of its own duration.”63 This statement alone shows the strength and the weakness of American society during the mid-nineteenth century. It was strong because of the Christian tradition in communities, but it was weak, as the Polynesians were weak before Kamehameha II came to power, in its association between Christianity and the sources of its rule-based morality.

Eventually, just as the taboos would fall, the influence of post-Enlightenment philosophy on morality would go into decline as well. It is hard to make a direct connection between Nietzsche’s indictment of morality and the decline of Christianity as an institution wholly separate from democratic influence, but nonetheless the Twentieth Century saw a flourish of Nietzscheans as the morality of the Enlightenment went into decline. Tocqueville observed that, “Religious peoples are…naturally strong precisely where democratic peoples are weak; this makes very visible how important it is that men keep to their religion when becoming equal.”64 As religion—as a moral force, at least—became less important and as other institutions of civil society, such as sports leagues, community centers, and local economies went into decline, so did the misperceptions about the sources of post-Enlightenment morality.

In his 1953 work The Quest for Community: A study in the Ethics of Order & Freedom, Robert Nisbet notes the “tendencies of rationalization, impersonality, mechanism, and leveling which have so powerfully affected the cultural and social nature of the modern European society.”65 Those observations on democracy without civil society are remarkably similar to the ones made by Tocqueville a century earlier. As the civil institutions which held such import for Tocqueville went into decline, the State took on a role of vast importance to the democratic masses. Nisbet argues that contrary to patterns in the Nineteenth Century, the Twentieth Century State developed a “mass relationship” with the people.66 Administrative efficiencies, as well as the natural tendency for governments to gain power, allowed the State to perform functions that were once localized by necessity.67 As a result, while civil society was crumbling, the State, which had a deliberate separation from religion and ostensibly no framework of morality other than the Lockean construction, perpetuated the evaporation of morality in society.

MacIntyre argues that today, because of the dominance of the bureaucratic state, we have slipped into a state without morality:

At this point, a solution to the decline of morality in the Twentieth Ccentury seems to have emerged. If the State could decentralize, cut down on the bureaucracy, and give more power to the local communities—in other words, if it ended its “mass relationship” with the people—then civil society might reemerge. Along with this resurgence of civil society, there would be a return to tradition, to community, and perhaps even resurgence in a morality more resistant to Nietzsche.

While this policy solution would help greatly in restoring the vestiges of Aristotelianism that had remained after the Enlightenment, it is by no means a moral panacea. To restore civil society would be to bring back communities that could potentially develop a telos, but without a changed philosophical outlook, teleology would have no reason to emerge. Without a corresponding return to Aristotle’s fundamentals, the return of communities would be, at best, the equivalent of reinstating all the taboos on the Polynesian people. The principles would still have no rational basis, the rules would still be subjective assertions of someone’s will, and society would once again be a sitting duck for Nietzsche—or someone like him—to deconstruct its morality all over again. The point here is that Tocqueville’s theory of civil society does an excellent job of explaining how the US had preserved some aspects of Aristotelianism during the Nineteenth Century. It also predicts how and why morality would decline in the absence of civil society. However, Alexis de Tocqueville cannot alone rescue western morality from the jaws of Nietzsche. For that task, we must turn to a philosopher.

Reviving Emerson

It should seem odd that I would look to Ralph Waldo Emerson, famous for an essay entitled “Self Reliance,” for a modern-day conception of Aristotelian morality. After all, Emerson is generally considered to be an individualist, unconcerned with the goals or progress of larger society. It was Emerson himself who said, “To believe in your own heart, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius.”69 However, despite the outward appearances that Emerson’s philosophy is withdrawn, overly optimistic, and even antisocial, the true nature of his conception of morality is far more complex and far closer to Aristotle than his reputation belies.

In The True and Only Heaven, Christopher Lasch asserts that, “It is time to rescue Emerson from his rescuers, those professional Pollyannas who have tried (beginning in his own lifetime) to counter the early impression of his “fatalism” by making him the patron saint of positive thinking.”70 It is time, indeed. The first, and most important, way in which one needs to reconceptualize Emerson as an Aristotelian is to understand that his philosophy is teleological.

With a complex but deeply ingrained conception of an order to the universe—as manifested by nature, spirituality, and human “genius,” Emerson goes much further than his transcendentalist counterparts in his search for truth. Emerson historian Peter S. Field claims that, “Emerson established himself…as one of the central players of the amorphous political movement derisively styled Transcendentalism.”71 This categorization of Emerson, however, denies a critical distinction between Emerson and the transcendentalists. As Lasch reports, most transcendentalists saw their movement as a social advancement in secularizing religion, but also as a movement inward, toward spirituality of the mind.72 Emerson on the other hand was not part of a social movement against religion or expressly in favor of the self; in fact, he rejected the title of “transcendentalist.”73 Emerson’s interest was in finding “the truth” about how men and women should live their lives, and exploring the human role in the context of a greater metaphysical order.74

This search for the truth was the first step in Emerson’s consuming drive to discover a telos. For Emerson, the fundamental problem is that, “There is not…a sufficient belief in the unity of things, to persuade them that society can be maintained without artificial restraints.”75 Emerson’s frustration was that people of his day were too obedient to the “artificial restraints” of morality instead of in pursuit of how to live the good life. In a letter to his wife, Emerson contended that, “There are two objects between which the mind vibrates like a pendulum; one, the desire of truth; the other, the desire of Repose. He in whom the love of repose predominates, will accept the first creed he meets…but he shuts the door of the Truth.”76 As such, an understanding of the truth, and the ability to distinguish between how things are and how things should be is of utmost importance.

In Self-Reliance, Emerson contends that, “If we live truly, we shall see truly.”77 Part of seeing truly, according to Emerson, is rejecting meaningless rules that prevent people from discovering the truth. His categorical rejection of the Calvinist church of his day, an institution that he referred to as a “dead Bible society,” is a manifestation of that desire to tear down principles that have no basis in the true realization of humanity.78 Thus, when Emerson quips that, “Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” he is not rejecting the concept of a teleological consistency but instead the meaningless consistency that informed the morality of his day.79

Emerson’s desire to debunk the Calvinist myths of his day is closely related to his desire to search for a teleological truth. As Aristotle would assert but Enlightenment morality would not, rules without a grounding in the telos are nothing more than one man’s subjective opinion. For Emerson, it is his desire to get rid of subjective principles that leads him to appeal to individualism. Emerson does not advocate individualism for its own sake; rather, he discusses individual rejection of the established faulty morality in order to advance his own teleological view. In his essay “Experience,” Emerson describes his vision for what the individual should do: “In the solitude to which every man is always returning, he has a sanity and revalations…the true romance which the world exists to realize will be the transformation of genius into practical power.”80 Thus, only through introspection and rejection of the established moral norms can mankind begin to understand his quest for the good life, according to a telos.

Practical power, then, in Emersonian terms, is the equivalent to life in the telos—it is an execution of someone who desires to live according to “the truth.” Genius, a word that Emerson uses frequently and not always consistently, generally refers to a person’s ability to understand his or her role in the telos. Emerson’s big complaint about Nineteenth Century society is that, “So much of our time is preparation, so much is routine, so much is retrospect, that the pith of each man’s genius contracts itself to a very few hours.”81 In order to increase the practical power of humanity, each person must become more aware of the telos—he or she must increase his or her genius. Interestingly, Nietzsche also refers to “genius,” but in a very different way. Nietzsche’s geniuses were the uebermensch, a select few individuals who could elevate society to the next level of understanding. Emerson’s concept of genius, on the other hand, is attainable by all people. The more society understands the genius of the telos, the closer to “the truth” or “the good life” that it gets. Genius is a social good for Emerson.

The only way for Emerson’s teleology to be discovered is through a realization of genius by the people. The way in which to do this, according to Emerson, is by means of life experience and hard work. This, too, is a very Aristotelian concept. MacIntyre explains that for Aristotle, the virtues necessitate certain kinds of behavior, and man cannot understand the virtues without conforming to these norms of behavior. Only through tradition, work, and communal understanding can Aristotle’s telos be practically realized.82 Emerson also posits that “truth” cannot be understood without work. The existing post-Enlightenment morality, with all its airy principles, does not meet this standard. In “Experience,” Emerson notes that, “Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity. If a man should consider the nicety of the passage of a piece of bread down his throat, he would starve.”83 Thus, a person cannot possibly understand the telos without work. “Do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself,” he states.84 Through work, one may gain an understanding about the truth of human nature.

The Emersonian relationship between practical power and genius is similar to the Aristotelian relationship between virtue and the telos. The concepts enjoy a mutually complementary relationship in both cases. As an understanding of the truth is gained, one can learn what kind of person he or she is to become; conversely, by acting according to tradition and social interaction, one can gain an increased understanding of the truth. In both cases it is dramatically different from an Enlightenment viewpoint because work and understanding in the telos are an inherently social function.

There is a great deal of confusion about Emerson’s belief in individualism, primarily because he is not consistent in his writings. As he got older, he began to overtly praise the role of society to a far greater extent. Lasch contends, “Often misunderstood as a radical individualist, Emerson considers the loss of human fellowship a grievous affliction.”85 Additionally, “In ‘Society and Solitude,’ one of his last essays, [Emerson] condemns solitude as a condition ‘against nature…’”86 This is a remarkable admission, considering Emerson’s much more antisocial sentiments in “Self-Reliance.” The point to be made here is not that Emerson was always consistent, but that in the end he conceded the necessity of society in morality.

To summarize, Emerson’s moral framework shares similarities with Aristotle in a number of important areas. To begin with, both philosophies are teleological; they assume a certain friction between the way people are and the way they should be and attribute it to some natural order. Additionally, both dismiss the idea of following rules that have no rational basis derived from the telos. Emerson can’t get quite that far because his society does not have a telos as such, but he does make the step to say that existing rules and principles should be rejected in favor of a search for “the truth.” Finally, both agree that society plays an important function in the continuity of morality. While Emerson is far more praiseworthy of the individual Aristotle, he ultimately believes in a telos that can only be understood in the context of others.

These similarities save Emerson, as I have described him, from Nietzsche’s critique of the Enlightenment. However, they do not make Emerson perfect. There are still numerous problems with Emerson. First, he is clearly not a perfect fit with Aristotle, as his tendencies toward naturalism and his sometimes-preference for the individual render his philosophy less than consistent. Additionally, Emerson as I have interpreted him may not be Emerson as another interprets him. In fact, due to the existing perceptions of Emerson as an antisocial individualist, most would not naturally make a connection with Aristotle. This would create a problem in both the teaching of morality and the practice of his teleological framework.

Along with the complications, however, the ability to use Emerson would solve several problems. First and foremost, it would give an American voice to the reconceptualization of morality that MacIntyre has demanded. Because Emerson is already a respected American writer, and because he works within the bounds of Christianity and the existing social and political order (although it is pre-Nietzschean), Emerson would be a lot easier to swallow as a moral authority than some ancient Greek guy. Finally, Emerson does not share Aristotle’s belief in slavery; to the contrary, Emerson devoted much of his time and energies to denouncing it as a “great evil” to be eradicated from society.87 For these reasons, if Emerson could be used, it would be especially advantageous to use him.

Conclusions

Alisdair MacIntyre’s ultimatum has presented American society with a difficult question. Shall we continue down the path of emotivism, in the wake of Nietzsche’s shocking blow to the Enlightenment’s moral structures, or shall we attempt to rekindle a morality that has been dead since the Dark Ages? The answer must be to choose the old Aristotelian morality, no matter how difficult, instead of the irrational and dangerous maxims of the post-Enlightenment era. If we allow him to, Nietzsche and his minions will deconstruct the new morality until nothing is left.

In the pursuit of Aristotelian morality, two authorities on America—Alexis de Tocqueville and Ralph Waldo Emerson—offer potential paths to success. Tocqueville’s observations on civil society and the role of institutions and tradition imply that we must return to a more community-oriented, locally controlled society. However, Tocqueville alone cannot cause a paradigm shift. Without a new philosophy that avoids the weaknesses of subjectivity and secularization, returning to civil society would be little more than delaying the inevitable. Emerson’s relentless intellectual pursuits offer the needed change in outlook. His indictment of meaningless rules and secular maxims in his search for a modern-day telos offers the beginnings of a new morality. This moral framework, conceived in the tradition of classic Greek philosophy but written as a uniquely American manifesto, holds the true possibility of philosophical redemption in our society.

Emerson cannot propose a philosophically sound solution on his own. However, an understanding of his writings as essentially social and teleological would serve as a step in the right direction. Aristotle himself built on the writings of the earlier Greek tradition. He was not the beginning, but rather the culmination, of classic moral thought. Today, America finds itself in need of someone to begin the base of a new moral structure. Emerson’s teleology is not—and should not be—the ultimate goal of our moral endeavors. He is merely a step in the right direction.

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