Virtue Ethics - Aristotle and MacIntyre

Aristotle lived in a time where different virtues were considered good (Physical strength, courage, cunning and friendship - Homeric values) and (Courage, friendship, justice, temperance and wisdom- Athenian Values)
When he lived it was important to be strong and brave to protect your village from attackers, but at society has changed the virtues that we should aim for have also. eg: The emphasis on strength and cunning for war have gone.
Alaisdair MacIntyre tried to establish a system of virtue ethics for modern life - so he liked the theory and agreed with it, but updated it so that it was useful in modern times! he thought that "modern ethics put too much emphasis on reason and not enough stress on people" so he wanted to change this. He thought that the virtues to strive towards were: courage, justice, temperance, wisdom, industriousness, hope and patience. These are called MacIntyres Virtues.
A. MacIntyre said "Society depends for its very existence upon people who exhibit virtues" and he tried to find a way for Aristotles ideas to be applicable in modern society eg: making it accessible to women as well as men, and changing the virtues most valued to modern life!

....Hope that helps!

How would you write a whole essay on just MacIntyre? I feel like there isn't very much to say

Well you can write about:
- Everything written above (new virtues compared to the old ones) just flesh it out a bit
- Why society has changed and why the new virtues are needed (no longer warriors, so different virtues)
- His book 1981: After Virtue
- Use some of his quotes and explain them
- His ideas about internal and external goods
- Other ideas such as: Being virtuous does not prevent you from having vices
- Justice, Courage and Honesty (his 3 most important) and how they prevent you from becoming morally corrupt.

....If you write a bit about all of that, focusing mainly on a couple of points that you know lots about and with a brief paragraph about the others, you should have a pretty good essay in my opinion. Just because the essay is about him, it doesn't mean you can't mention others who used his ideas, or he took ideas from! You could write a beast intro explaining virtue ethics and dropping loads of names and ideas in, before focusing in on MacIntyre, it would show them that you know what you're talking about which will get them looking at your essay from a more positive note right from the beginning!

Thank you that's really helpful and I'm not as stressed now!

Was just doing a past paper (june 2011, WJEC RS3 ETH) and found a perfect question for this topic:

(a) Explain How Aristotle’s Virtue Theory Was Developed By Anscombe and byMacIntyre. (30).

It came up 4 years ago, so it is possible that it is repeated this year! If it does hopefully you'll be able to answer it really well now!