Alasdair Maclntyre and the Professional Practice of Nursing
27
Tliis concept has three elements: the element of a
practice, of a narrative, and of a moral tradition.
Tlie purpose of this paper is to outline the nature
of a practice as MacIntyre defines it and to begin to
develop an account of nursing as a particular type of
practice - this specific type of practice is provisionally
termed a professional practice. It is anticipated that
the approach will offer an explanation of nursing that
provides room for a moral dimension together with a
possible route by which the virtues necessary for
nursing can be identified.
Alasdair Maclntyre and the notion of
a practice
One of the difficulties of developing a unified tradi-
tion of the virtues is the apparent arbitrary nature of
which virtues appear on the lists in the differing
accounts. Maclntyre does not believe this to be an
obstacle to his project, in fact he uses these differ-
ences to begin to explain similarities in the virtue tra-
ditions. He notes that for each tradition there exist
social and cultural explanations for the inclusion of
particular virtues and that this is related to what is
valued in a given society. Thus the list of virtues
valued by the Athenian can only be understood in the
context of Athenian society, the Homeric virtues
because they honour the hero, and the Christian
virtues because they offer a route to salvation. Thus
for MacIntyre there is nothing arbitrary about any
given list of virtues; the virtues of a society are valued
because they suit the purposes of that society or
community.
It is this notion that leads MacIntyre to conclude
that what accounts of the virtues have in common is
a sense of purpose related to ends. He states:
We thus have three very different conceptions of a virtue
to confront: a virtue is a quality which enables an individual
to discharge his or her social role (Homer); a virtue is a
quality which enables an individual to move towards
the achievement of the specifically human telos, whether
natural or supernatural (Aristotle, the New Testament and
Aquinas); a virtue is a quality which has utility in achieving
earthly and heavenly success (Franklin). (MacIntyre, 1984,
p. 186)
This analysis provides a social and cultural history
and allows the virtues to be seen as supporting and
maintaining particular ends. MacIntyre identifies
common features of the virtues and develops a
complex triumvirate that leads to the definition of a
virtue. The three elements are his notion of a practice,
his notion of an individual narrative, and his notion
of a moral tradition. Each of these requires some
explanation but this paper will concentrate on the
notion of a practice, although some links to the other
two elements will inevitably occur.
MacIntyre defines a practice as:
... any coherent and complex form of socially established
cooperative human activity through which goods internal to
that form of activity are realized in the course of trying
to achieve those standards of excellence which are appro-
priate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity ...
(1984, p. 187)
For MacIntyre a practice is that form of activity
whereby the goods internal to that practice have
value to the individual undertaking the practice and
where the practice is undertaken in order to realize
those internal goods. A practice in this conception
differs from other forms of activity that have pri-
marily external goods attached. He claims that it is
within practices that the virtues may flourish.
MacIntyre uses the example of teaching a child to
play chess. Initially the adult may only be able to get
the child to play chess with the offer of some exter-
nal reward (sweets) and the child may happily enter
into games of chess in order to receive sweets. If the
child begins to develop an interest in chess that tran-
scends the interest in the external goods (the sweets)
then MacIntyre would say that this demonstrates the
beginnings of a recognition of the rewards of internal
goods.That is to say, as the child becomes more inter-
ested in the strategy and the satisfaction of entering
into the spirit of the game then the child is realizing
both that there are goods internal to the game of
chess and that these internal goods are worth pursu-
ing. It becomes more important to play the game well
(without cheating for example) and less important to
play merely for gain (sweets) or to win.The child who
has reached this point is becoming involved with
chess as a practice - winning now becomes a matter
© Blackwell Science Ltd 2000 Nursing Philosophy, 1, pp. 26--33
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