Article Summary:
David Brooks’ article in The Atlantic explores the moral decay in modern society through the lens of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s work, examining how Western culture has lost its shared moral framework. Historically, people derived meaning from inherited social roles and community standards of excellence, where individuals sought to fulfill their responsibilities with integrity and purpose.
The Enlightenment shifted this paradigm by prioritizing individual autonomy and privatizing morality. While this brought increased personal freedom, it also created a moral vacuum where traditional ethical guideposts were removed. Without a shared moral order, people increasingly make decisions based on personal preferences and emotions rather than consistent ethical principles.
This moral fragmentation has led to several problematic societal trends: increased polarization, the inability to resolve disagreements constructively, and the tendency to use political identity as a source of meaning. Donald Trump is presented as a symptom of this moral breakdown—a figure who embodies hyper-individualism and acts solely based on personal desire and power.
The author argues that recovering from this moral crisis requires restoring a coherent moral vocabulary and rebalancing individual autonomy with community responsibility. This doesn’t mean rejecting the Enlightenment entirely, but recalibrating cultural values to emphasize character, shared purpose, and moral education.
Article Excerpt:
“One of the problems with living in a society with no shared moral order is that we have no way to settle arguments. We have no objective standard by which to determine that one view is right and another view is wrong. So public arguments just go on indefinitely, at greater levels of indignation and polarization. People use self-righteous words to try to get their way, but instead of engaging in moral argument, what they’re really doing is using the language of morality to enforce their own preferences.”