I'll start by saying I found this book truly valuable and illuminating. I'll divide my observations about it to two sections, the first about its criticisms of dominant ethical stances as well as the social sciences. The second about the solution it proposes, its version of virtue ethics.
In the beginning of the book MacIntyre essentially compares the state of ethics in modern society to the premise of A Canticle for Leibowitz. The idea is that there was a catastrophic cataclysm of a sort that rendered ideas that were once intelligible, comprehensible, logical null. A weird state like the premise of A Canticle for Leibowitz (which I wrote a blog post on), in which we possess fragments of knowledge about the past, but we are also in a state of semiotic confusion about the meaning of the terms and why they are there in the first place (like how a scholar in the aforementioned novel believed Capek's R.U.R is in fact a historical account and therefore misinterprets the nature of the biology of the humans of his time). MacIntyre's argument is that this cataclysm, and the failure to therefore have a meaningful, agreed upon idea of a moral goodness is the result of the dismissal of teleology by the enlightenment philosophers, culminating in Hume's famous assertion that "is does not imply ought".
The book then examines some of the attempts to salvage ethics in this state of disaster, in the absence of the previously present Aristotelian and Christian telos. This examination, as well as dismantling, of all of these attempts, was probably the most enlightening part of the book, in my opinion. The faulty 18th century psychology informing utilitarianism, the faulty perception of humanity informing Kantianism, the eroded premises that once informed the idea of the natural rights. Basically, for example, utilitarianism pertained to replace the Christian teleology by appealing to a supposedly universal human psychology (which will therefore always be correct) - that of the seeking of pleasure and avoidance of pain. But of course, this is an incorrect psychology, as more empirical studies in the present can attest - humans aren't solely motivated at all, in fact, by the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain. On top of that, pleasure isn't one thing, and neither is pain, there are no parameters for them, and they are also not opposites on a single scale but can, for example, come together in many instances. Yet utilitarianism persisted - what made it make sense, its psychology which at a time was considered credible, has long since been discredited. And yet it has still remained a dominant cultural relic still being used in arguments about good or bad. But it is not alone - while Kantianism failed to reach such cultural heights, there is another such ethical tradition which is just as dominant in our modern world - that of human rights. But human rights too are no longer intelligible - in a Lockean context they were part of a natural order, made thusly by God, but since then we have come to reject certain Aristotelian distinctions, essence and accident, that would've rendered ideas like "natural order" and therefore "natural rights" meaningful. Already in the American declaration of independence we can already see them as not even argued for - rather merely stated to be "self-evident". A tragedy beyond their non-existent remaining intelligibility, according to MacIntyre, is the fact that both exist, are predicated on wholly different premises, and are therefore not in true dialogue with one another - rather an antagonistic relationship exists between them. He mentions how modern politics are in some ways a state of civil war, there's a conflict between a sort of Weberian, sociologically-minded, bureaucratic utilitarianism informing whole systems, pitted against a liberal individualist notion of rights. They are incommensurable and are only ever in a state of compromise, mediation.
In the academic circles of his time, this state of affairs led to the rise of emotivism, that seems to be the final nail in the coffin of ethics - declaring they are all, all matters of good and bad, merely statements of intent made contagious.
He also critiques bureaucratic, Weberian approaches, and the social sciences at large very presciently - displaying that they fail to meet the sort of empirical standards demanded in the natural and exact sciences. And that therefore they too cannot be said to be authorities about collective goodness and its achievement in modern society.
Now, while his critiques are very sharp and I believe wholly correct - the second part of the book devotes itself to a solution. The solution the book proposes - a return to Aristotelian Virtue Ethics (or more like, its interpretation of Aristotle and Virtue Ethics, which isn't a universally agreed upon interpretation, MacIntyre himself admits in the final chapter). I did find quite a lot of value in his description of "practices", and the internal/external goods distinction (as well as arguments about the logical feasibility of telos, at least in some aspects of life) - I think there is a good argument there but a limited sort of teleological approach within enclosed practices. However I found his attempt to enlarge the scope to include the entirety of a human's existence to be generally unconvincing. Rather unfortunate because I feel that generally, especially due to the excellence of his critiques, that I am left with no good answer.
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