Seeing to it

“The flourishing of the virtues requires and in turn sustains a certain kind of community, necessarily a small-scale community, within which the goods of various practices are ordered, so that, as far as possible, regard for each finds its due place within the lives of each individual, or each household, and in the life of the community at large. Because, implicitly or explicitly, it is always by reference to some conception of the overall and final human good that other goods are ordered, the life of every individual, household or community by its orderings gives expression, wittingly or unwittingly, to some conception of the human good. And it is when goods are ordered in terms of an adequate conception of human good that the virtues genuinely flourish. ‘Politics’ is the Aristotelian name for the set of activities through which goods are ordered in the life of the community.” – Alasdair MacIntyre, Preface to the Polish edition of After Virtue (quoted by Sophie-Grace Chappell in “Rôles and Reasons”)