On two ongoing shifts in the conditions of public discourse

In Dependent Rational Animals, MacIntyre argues that people become practical reasoners that engage in public discourse and political deliberation by drawing from the argumentative resources of intermediate structures of society. Two decades later, two ongoing transformations within these intermediate structures suggest a reassessment of the MacIntyrean analysis: (i) Practical reasoning is “reasoning together with others, generally within some determinate set of social relationships” (MacIntyre, 1999, p. 107), but persons increasingly belong to multiple delocalized communities of practice across which they transfer cultural beliefs, specifications of virtue and forms of argumentation. For an individual to become a practical reasoner is thus now necessary to combine these multiple affiliations with the traditional task of finding “one’s place within a network of givers and receivers” (MacIntyre, 1999, p. 113) that pursue a common good. As citizens, they have to reflectively acknowledge that no single network holds all the discursive and ethical resources needed for public deliberation. (ii) MacIntyre highlights the risk of a disembedding of market relationships from local nonmarket relationships “of uncalculated giving and receiving” (MacIntyre, 1999, p. 117), but the impact of social media on the sphere of social communication now rather determines a reverse embedding of nonmarket relationships into market relationships. This process has an impact on public discourse, as it puts personal relationships into a communicative context of polarized collective identities averse to shared reasoning and decision-making on the common good. In the light of this twofold analysis, a partial reconsideration of MacIntyre’s account of the conditions of practical reasoning among citizens is presented.