common sense

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is never more than an inherited amalgam of past clarities and past confusions. Thus, the defenders of common sense are unlikely to enlighten us.

Because common sense is never more than an inherited amalgam of past clarities and past confusions, the defenders of common sense are unlikely to enlighten us.

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is nothing more than the outcome of the liberal or enlightenment project expressed in the single frustrated ambition to escape history and tradition.

It is noteworthy that Maclntyre,in setting up his disjunction, follows the patternwe firstfound in Pacini and Blumenberg. Thatis,hedefinesmodernitybyreducingittoanessence. For Maclntyre,it is nothing more than the outcome of the liberal orEnlightenment project. That project,in turn, expresses itself in a single, necessarily frustrated ambition: to escape history and tradition. It results,therefore,in a formof life in which rationalmoral discourse is impossible. Hence, we musteither have thecourage of irrationalist convictions and become Nietzscheans, or we must return to tradition. And for Maclntyre,we now know, that means Augustinian Christianity. (in stout 'modernity without essence').

 does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Rather, Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

*Fanaticism is to superstition what delirium is to fever, and fury to anger.

Alasdair MacIntyre

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Alasdair MacIntyre