After Virtue

After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory is a book on moral philosophy by the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. MacIntyre provides a bleak view of the state of modern moral discourse, regarding it as failing to be rational, and failing to admit to being irrational. He claims that older forms of moral discourse were in better shape, particularly singling out Aristotle's moral philosophy as an exemplar. After Virtue is among the most important texts in the 20th-century revival of virtue ethics. The book was first published in 1981 and has since gone through two subsequent editions, which have added to, but not changed, the original text. The second edition, published in 1984, adds a postscript replying to critics of the first edition; the third edition, published in 2007, contains a new prologue entitled "After Virtue After a Quarter of a Century".