Monday, May 07, 2007

MacIntyre on Inquiry and Narrative

Of every particular enquiry there is a narrative to be written, and being able to understand that enquiry is inseparable from, implicitly or explicitly, being able to identify and follow that narrative. Correspondingly every philosophical account of enquiry presupposes some account of how the narratives of particular enquiries should be written. And indeed every narrative of some particular enquiry, insofar as it makes the progress of that enquiry intelligible, by exhibiting the course of its victories and its defeats, its frustrations and endurances, its changes of strategy and tactics, presuppose some ordering of causes of the kind that is only provided by an adequate philosophical account of enquiry.

[Alasdair MacIntyre, First Principles, Final Ends and Contemporary Philosophical Issues, p. 49.]