Abstract

Among Kierkegaard scholars, there is a great deal of concern regarding how to deal with Alasdair MacIntyre’s treatment of Kierkegaard in his seminal work After Virtue. In this essay, I attempt to defend MacIntyre’s claim that the choice articulated in Kierkegaard’s Either/Or is irrational through a close reading of an essay from a later work by Kierkegaard, Stages on Life’s Way. In so doing, I argue that though MacIntyre’s interpretation of the position articulated in Either/Or is essentially correct, he is mistaken to attribute that position, articulated by a pseudonym, to Kierkegaard. Instead, I argue that Kierkegaard should be seen as strategically employing that position to level a criticism against a certain rationalist tradition in ethics embodied by fi gures as diverse as Kant, Rousseau, and Diderot.