Tending towards the good; salvaging the teleological ethics in Taylor and MacIntyre

Abstract

There is a common misunderstanding regarding ethics, which consists in believing that this concept entails a merely normative stance, such that its scope and reflections can be reduced to codes, regulations and norms. We propose that a teleological ethics, whether based on good or virtue, adds an existential dimension that responds to the human search for meaning in life, a subject absent in the procedural or utilitarian ethics so often used in manuals of good practices throughout Latin America. We adopt the ethical approaches to ‘the good’ found in Charles Taylor and to ‘virtue’ in Alasdair MacIntyre; two authors considered the leading contemporary philosophers whose theories rescue teleological ethics in a highly-innovative way based on introducing the narrative dimension into human life.