Analyse & Kritik 30/2008 ( c Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart) p. 5–16 Carey Seal MacIntyre and the Polis Abstract: This paper traces Alasdair MacIntyre’s account of the development of the Greek polis as presented in A Short History of Ethics, After Virtue, and Whose Justice? Which Rationality?. The paper argues for the centrality of Aristotle’s conception of po- litics as an architectonic art to this account. It explores the foundations of MacIntyre’s presentation of moral rationality in Homer and offers the poems of Hesiod as an aid to understanding MacIntyre’s view of the post-Homeric crisis in Greek ethics. Aristotle is then invoked to show how MacIntyre represents the polis as a classical response to that crisis. Accounts of the development and nature of the Greek polis are central to the histories of ethics offered by Alasdair MacIntyre in three of his books: A Short History of Ethics, After Virtue, and
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