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Quotes

📙 After Virtue

That particular actions derive their character as parts of larger wholes is a point of view alien to our dominant ways of thinking and yet one which it is necessary at least to consider if we are to begin to understand how a life may be more than a sequence of individual actions and episodes. (Location 4184)

analytical philosophers who have constructed accounts of human actions which make central the notion of ‘a’ human action. (Location 4274)

Once we have understood its importance the claim that the concept of an action is secondary to that of an Intelligible action will perhaps appear less bizarre and so too will the claim that the notion of ‘an’ action, while of the highest practical importance, is always a potentially misleading abstraction. (Location 4378)

A central thesis then begins to emerge: man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal. He is not essentially, but becomes through his history, a teller of stories that aspire to truth. But the key question for men is not about their own authorship; I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’ We enter human society, that is, with one or more imputed characters—roles into which we have been drafted—and we have to learn what they are in order to be able to understand how others respond to us and how our responses to them are apt to be construed. (Location 4422)

Each of the shorter-term intentions is, and can only be made, Intelligible by reference to some longer-term intentions; and the characterization of the behavior in terms of the longer-term intentions can only be correct if some of the characterizations in terms of shorter-term intentions are also correct. (Location 4250)

the medieval conception of a quest is not at all that of a search for something already adequately characterized, as miners search for gold or geologists for oil. (Location 4489)

Conversational behavior is not a special sort or aspect of human behavior, even though the forms of language-using and of human life are such that the deeds of others speak for them as much as do their words. (Location 4327)

The notion of a history is as fundamental a notion as the notion of an action. Each requires the other. (Location 4381)