Alasdair MacIntyre: The philosopher who broke up the Beatles

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The Guardian obituary by Jane O'Grady brings out the importance of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who died last week:

"Imagine," runs the opening of After Virtue, "that the natural sciences were to suffer the effects of a catastrophe", that science and science teaching have been deliberately abolished, and only charred pages, disconnected scientific terms and meaningless incantations remain.

This, said MacIntyre, is our current moral situation. ... All we have are "the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts which now lack those contexts from which their significance is derived". This is why we regard moral argument as "necessarily interminable"; we do not even expect to reach consensus. Should we prioritise human rights and/or the general happiness, individual choice and/or the general will, hedonism and will-to-power and/or compassion and self-abnegation?

MacIntyre saw the way forward as a return to Aristotle and a view of ethics that concentrates on the character and moral virtues of individuals rather than rules or consequences when determining ethical actions. 

It's a form of ethics that might be able tell you how you should live your life, which is the greatest question in the field, yet one that many other views insist they cannot answer. I remember one of my lecturer's at York saying that when she started out, studying moral philosophy meant slogging through numerous papers on the meaningless of ethical language.

But MacIntyre has another claim to fame, as reported in Christopher Kaczor's memoir of him (it was in my last Joy of Six):

Alasdair often joked that his most significant achievement was breaking up the Beatles. Conventional wisdom holds that Yoko Ono played a key role in the end of the band. 

In 1966, MacIntyre lived in the same apartment complex as Yoko. One day, she came to MacIntyre’s apartment and asked to borrow a ladder that she needed for her upcoming art show. It was at this art exhibit that John Lennon met Yoko. 

Lennon recounts, "There was another piece that really decided me for-or-against the artist: a ladder which led to a painting which was hung on the ceiling. It looked like a black canvas with a chain with a spyglass hanging on the end of it. This was near the door when you went in. I climbed the ladder, you look through the spyglass and in tiny little letters it says 'yes.' So it was positive. I felt relieved. It’s a great relief when you get up the ladder and you look through the spyglass and ... it said ‘yes.’ ...  I was very impressed and John Dunbar introduced us."

Lennon mentions the ladder MacIntyre gave to Yoko three times. Without the ladder, would Lennon have been so impressed with the art exhibit? Without being so impressed, would he have asked to meet Yoko? If Lennon had not met Yoko, would the Beatles have broken up?