This project began when I started reading critics of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice in the philosophy course Philosophy of Justice. That interest grew into this Fellowship which I conducted under the guidance of Dr. Richard Lauer, examining critics of Rawls. I became especially interested in Alasdair MacIntyre's communitarian objections to liberalism. This paper focuses on whether MacIntyre's own philosophy can consistently avoid the charge of moral relativism it seems to invite.
While working through MacIntyre's After Virtue alongside secondary scholarship, I found the strongest version of the argument that MacIntyre is a relativist, and then tested it against his own philosophical commitments to see if the charges hold up, ultimately concluding that he subscribes to a weak form of moral universalism. This project gave me the chance to spent time reading and engaging with many philosophical works, culminating in a research paper.