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The Contemporary AristotelianMuseum: Exploring theMuseum as a Site of MacIntyre'sTradition‐constituted EnquiryJenifer BoothPublished online: 14 May 2007.

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JOURNAL FOR CULTURAL RESEARCH VOLUME 11 NUMBER 2 (APRIL 2007)

ISSN 1479–7585 print/1740–1666 online/07/020141–19© 2007 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/14797580701362104

The Contemporary Aristotelian Museum: Exploring the Museum as a Site of MacIntyre’s Tradition-constituted Enquiry

Jenifer BoothTaylor and Francis LtdRCUV_A_236102.sgm10.1080/14797580701362104Journal for Cultural Research1479-7585 (print)/1740-1666 (online)Original Article2007Taylor & Francis112000000April 2007JeniferBoothjen_booth@fsmail.net

The connection is made between the Royal Museum of Scotland and encyclopae-dia, one of MacIntyre’s three rival versions of moral enquiry. It is then asked howMacIntyre’s other two methods, genealogy and tradition-constituted enquiry,would function within a museum. It is proposed that the museum fulfilsHaldane’s criterion for tradition-constituted enquiry in that it combines theimmanence and open-endedness of the methods of enquiry with transcendencein the objects of enquiry. The ethical judgments of the visitors constitute tran-scendent truth in morality; hence one can see the museum as a site of Aristote-lian enquiry.To pursue this, the museum is explored as a site of Aristotelian study or theoria,and of MacIntyre’s updated Aristotelianism. Therein we study the narrativeswritten by historians and by individuals in a version of Aristotelian epagõgê, orthe sifting of the opinions of the many and the wise. This process may alsoenhance civic friendship and our exercise of practical wisdom towards disadvan-taged groups.Finally, MacIntyre’s three rival versions of moral enquiry are returned to, and amuseum characterised for each. All three are found to involve seriousness in thepurposes of enquiry. Attention is drawn to MacIntyre’s criticism of the interac-tion of bureaucracy and social science. It is proposed that such interaction may,in the case of the museum, dilute its seriousness as a site of enquiry.

Introduction

It is arguable that there is a political aspect to museums. Numerous articlesrecount disputes and difficulties regarding museums which deal with sensitivetopics (for example Sheridan 2005, Santos 2003, p. 27, McAtackney 2005). TonyBennett sees museums as part of a group of cultural institutions which have, inthe past, organised aspects of cultural knowledge in ways which have affectedspecific programs of governance (Bennett 2002). Santos agrees that museums can

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be political but is interested in the extent to which their connection to the realityof the past informs such politics; she argues that it is not easy to use them fordistinctive political aims because:

museum professionals do not always have the power to associate the narrativesthey want with the process of remembering. (Santos 2003, p. 39)

To explore this, Santos reviews modernist and post-modernist approaches tomuseums. She notes how modernist museums evolved from being “temples ofcultural imperialism” to being “organised collections adapted to the demands ofthe public” (Santos 2003, p. 27). These last, by their nature, begin to encroachon political themes. She notes how writing on museums has moved from criticis-ing the constraining power of modernist museums to looking at ways to exploreidentity and citizenship (Santos 2003, p. 28). But both “sceptical and optimistic”approaches to museums, she argues, fail to capture adequately the importantrole of memory in museums. Such writing, she argues, does not allow that thepast, as museums call it to memory, can have a reality independent of the inter-pretations imposed by those in the present. She cites occasions when visitors,confronted by artefacts, unexpectedly produce authoritative narratives concern-ing them (Santos 2003, pp. 35–39). Hence she seeks to explore a third approachwhich places greater emphasis on tradition; an approach which she seeks to inte-grate with the modern worldview (Santos 2003, pp. 28–9). In this paper, I attemptto explore what can be added to the study of museums by the concept of tradi-tion as outlined in the philosophy of the broadly Aristotelian ethical and politicalphilosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre.

Museums as Sites of Enquiry

In Edinburgh there exists an important museum. Supported by the architectureof Francis Fowke,1 it has numerous rooms leading off balconies around a centralauditorium. Built 100 years on from the Enlightenment, The Royal Museum ofScotland, expresses a Victorian eagerness to display all knowledge. EileenHooper Greenhill has characterised similar museums elsewhere as modernist,and made the connection between modernism and encyclopaedia (Hooper-Greenhill 2000, p. 126).2 It seems reasonable, therefore, to associate thismuseum, with one of the Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry described in thebook of that name by the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (MacIntyre 1990b,henceforth TRV). Moral enquiry is, for MacIntyre, wider than that which is

1. An engineer and architect who also designed part of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.2. Bennett goes further and suggests that it was the display, within museums, of the cultural arte-facts of prehistory, with its emphasis on the typical of a particular period rather than on objects ofsingular beauty, which facilitated the move from Enlightenment speculative histories of “rude soci-eties” towards a unified history of man the “species” within a wider narrative of evolution (Bennett2002, drawing on Marchand and others).

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conventionally described as ethical enquiry and so includes such studies of manas anthropology, sciences of man and historical enquiry (MacIntyre 1990). Toquote him, the encyclopaedic type of enquiry has a

unitary conception of reason as affording a single view of the developing worldwithin which each part of the enquiry contributes to an overall progress whosesupreme achievement is an account of the progress of mankind. (MacIntyre1990, p. 32)

For him the canonical book of those who gave their allegiance to this worldviewis the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, published in the late nine-teenth century. MacIntyre notes that articles in the ninth edition were writtenby those who were also professors of nineteenth century universities and hencethat there is a parallel between this style of presentation of knowledge and astyle of university teaching; their university lectures being akin to encyclopaedicarticles. For MacIntyre, what is characteristic about this style of universityteaching is its authority, in which the expert speaks with the authoritative voiceof the worldview. One can see that the Royal Museum follows this approach: aroom of rocks, a room of stuffed animals, a room of Egyptian artefacts etc.,each one of which can be seen as the subject matter of a different lecture orencyclopaedic article.

Much recent debate in the philosophy of museums has involved criticism of thisVictorian/Enlightenment-inspired worldview from a post-modern perspective.This perspective, for example that of Nietzsche and Foucault, is the second ofMacIntyre’s three rival versions of moral enquiry. He characterizes it as follows:

Nietzsche, as genealogist, takes there to be a multiplicity of perspectiveswithin each of which truth-from-a point of view may be asserted, but no truth-as-such, an empty notion about the world, an equally empty notion. (MacIntyre1990b, p. 42)

In what follows, I intend to explore some of the limitations of this mode ofenquiry for museums and ask whether the third of MacIntyre’s versions of moralenquiry, which he calls tradition-constituted enquiry, could provide an improvedunderstanding of the museum as a resource for ethical and political enquiry.

Post-modern Problems in Museum Theory

Lisa Roberts’ interesting book on museum education looks at the history ofthought concerning museums as played out in several facets of their practice.Each facet, for Roberts, raises a different problem. Firstly, the changing inter-pretations which museums place on objects lead to questioning of the basis ofknowledge itself. Secondly, changing visitor experience leads to questions ofwhether it matters that the museum concerns itself with authenticity or simula-tion, and, thirdly, the changing nature of our understanding of the role of

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museums causes Roberts to explore the ethical component of different interpre-tations of objects (Roberts 1997, chapters 2, 3 and 4 respectively). Roberts’responses to these problems are broadly post-modern, in the sense of embracingthe paradox of attempting evaluation without very much in the way of transcen-dent conceptions such as truth.

Firstly, with respect to the basis of knowledge itself, she notes that there havebeen changes in museum object labelling, which raise the question of whetherthe museum establishment is the only authoritative voice which can interpret themeaning of objects (Roberts 1997, p. 56). From this she concludes that the mean-ing of an object exists “in a wider context of taste and value” in which thatobject has its place (Roberts 1997, p. 58). She refers to Lyotard’s “legitimisingcriteria”, to the effect that the legitimacy of knowledge rests on the “taste andvalues of the knowledge producers” (Roberts 1997, p. 58). She also claims thatthere has recently been, “open acknowledgement (among museologists) thatthere is more than one way of knowing”. Legitimacy is conferred on alternativeviews by “their mere presence in the museum” (Roberts 1997, p. 73). Roberts’solution to this problem of multiple “ways of knowing” involves making theprocess of production of knowledge and exhibits a shared process; one open toeveryone who might have a stake in a subject (Roberts 1997, p. 69).

Secondly, in considering changing visitor experience in museums, Robertsnotes how a desire for the real has been replaced by the desire for “realisticexperience”. This time she draws on a thinker whose work has significance forthe development of post-modernism: Ferdinand de Saussure. He divides the signinto signifier and signified, the former linked to the latter “not by nature but byculture” (Roberts 1997, p. 100). Roberts’ conclusion is that

meaning is not inherent to objects but resides in the signs by which we indicatethem … to speak of experiencing the real is to speak of experiencing, not someinnate quality contained in objects, but a wider context of signs which givemeaning to reality. (Roberts 1997, p. 102)

Finally, in her discussion of the changing nature of our understanding of the roleof museums, she moves into ethics:

beliefs, values and assumptions shape the narratives chosen concerning arte-facts. Curators have an ethical responsibility to acknowledge this has shapedtheir choice. (Roberts 1997, p. 129)

Roberts, however, rejects the following position, which MacIntyre has describedelsewhere as perspectivism (MacIntyre 1988, p. 352). She notes

education is about more than making meaning. If it were not we could stop righthere and simply accept that there are multiple versions of the world and that eachversion, under its own terms, is as plausible as the next. (Roberts 1997, p. 133)

She argues instead for “observing, comparing and evaluating possible versions ofthe world” within the museum space. In the end, what emerges as her solution

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is that she adapts her reading of Lyotard, quoting him to the effect that knowl-edge of the good comes from that which is

accepted in the social circle of the “knower’s interlocutors”. (Roberts 1997,p.�136 quoting Lyotard 1984, p. 19)

The apparent weakness of such consensus, compared to the powerful effective-ness of science, may be what leads Roberts to make awkward statements such as

what is at issue is not the truth of different versions but their truthfulness.(Roberts 1997, p. 133)

She does, however, present a position where she seems to see narrative as thatwhich can successfully arbitrate between versions of the good in museums(Roberts 1997, chapter 5).

Having noted some characteristics of, and gestured towards some problemswith, a post-modern approach to museums, as exemplified by Roberts’ work; thisseems an appropriate point to bring in MacIntyre’s concept of tradition-constitutedenquiry. John Haldane points out that MacIntyre, in TRV, makes the startling claimthat there is a third method of moral enquiry which is to be a genuine

“via media” between the radical relativism of the genealogist and the universalrationalism of the encyclopaedist. (Haldane 1994, p. 104)3

Haldane analyses what this method must have if it is to be more than the “common-place of academic enquiry” that “the forms and process of enquiry are shaped byhistory” (ibid., p. 105). To avoid this, he says, tradition-constituted enquiry muststeer a course between genealogy “historically situated and open-ended enquiry”where the objects are “immanent” (i.e. constructions and projections of thought)and encyclopaedia where the objects of reason are transcendent and

the means of engagement with them are likewise independent of historicalconditions of enquiry. (ibid., p. 104)

Haldane thinks that such a via media must, therefore, combine the immanenceand open-endedness of the means of enquiry with the transcendence of theobjects of enquiry (ibid., p. 104). The museum, as described by Roberts, wouldseem to fulfil this brief. While she has emphasised that reality is not

some immutable transcendent thing; it is subject to the conditions of its repre-sentation (Roberts 1997, p. 101)

yet signs, interpretations displayed in the museum, indicate “a reality thatconstantly eludes us” (Roberts 1997, p. 101).

3. I should thank Dr Rachel Jones for the comment that it is doubtful that genealogists woulddescribe themselves as relativists.

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The museum restores the possibility that there is some reality to which we havedirect access … What is paramount is not the “reality” enshrined in museums butthe possibility and the hope that there is something that can be so enshrined.(Roberts 1997, p. 103)

The museum, on this account and contrary to Roberts’ original assertions, doesemploy a transcendent concept of truth. The act of displaying differing points ofview in the museum, each resulting from different ethical values, captures abelief that ethical transcendence is possible; that, because the museum displaysthe different viewpoints, the visitors will be able to see where the differences ofopinion lie and move towards ethical transcendence on a particular point.4 Evenif, in a given instance, ethical transcendence appears to have been achieved, thismay well not be the final word on the subject. Another person may come alongwith a different view which needs to be accommodated. Hence the methods areimmanent. But hope of ethical transcendence of which Roberts speaks is basedon the hope of the reality of truth. MacIntyre is an Aristotelian philosopher.5 Inan essay of 1990 he writes that, for the Aristotelian, the virtues are required toagree on what should count as moral knowledge and this constitutes transcen-dent truth in morality (MacIntyre 1990a, pp. 189–90). For Aristotle, the possessorof practical wisdom is the ethical standard. The act of placing things in a museumexpresses the hope of the existence of something of the kind that Aristotle wasattempting to describe. The hope that we really have the ability to judge truly.(As we will discuss later, who “we” are can have more democratic and common-sense interpretations than that of only the few virtuous Athenian gentlemen ofthe Nicomachean Ethics.)

So enquiry within the museum fits Haldane’s criterea for tradition-constitutedenquiry. As MacIntyre is broadly an Aristotelian, I now propose to look at howenquiry within a museum could be Aristotelian.

Aristotle’s Concept of Theoria

Brunschwig and Lloyd begin their analysis of ancient Greek approaches to knowl-edge by making the rather sweeping statement that

early ancient Greek knowledge was more or less identified with sense percep-tion, especially visual perception. (Brunschwig and Lloyd 2003, p. 22)

They say that the Greek word for “I know”, oida comes from the same root asthe Latin video, “I see”. They also point out that the tense of oida means, not “I

4. This is not to deny the existence of “burdens of judgement” which John Rawls argues are sourcesof disagreement even among fully reasonable persons (Mulhall and Swift 1992, p. 177). It should beremembered, however, that friendship, tolerance and even forgiveness are all methods by whichethical transcendence can be achieved and are all intimately connected with truth.5. Though by the time of his writing TRV he has moved to the modified Aristotelianism of ThomasAquinas.

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see” but “I am currently in the situation of someone who has seen”, thus linkingknowledge to

not what I am seeing now but what I have seen, that at which I have been percep-tually present, what I remember after ceasing to see it and what I can recogniseif I happen to see it again. (Brunschwig and Lloyd 2003, p. 22)

They also say that, for the Greeks,

we humans are not in the world (to quote Spinoza) as an empire within anempire, as an island enclosed with representations that constitute a screenbetween ourselves and the real; quite to the contrary, we are an integral part ofit, we are made of the same ingredients as everything else in it. (Brunschwig andLloyd 2003, p. 19)

Similarly Nussbaum has written of Aristotle’s enquiry being “within appearances”(Nussbaum 2001, chapter 8): that is we are part of nature and we do not studyourselves as separate from it. Aristotle’s ethical method, as described byNussbaum, is firstly to set down the appearances or phainomena which, in thecase of ethics, is what the many and wise believe. Next to set out the puzzleswith which these appearances confront us, resolve them, and then bring theresult back to the phainomena to see if it is still in accord with them. Nussbaumagrees with G. E. L. Owen that to set down phainomena is not to look for belieffree fact, but to record our usage and the structure of thought and belief whichusage displays (Nussbaum 2001, pp. 244–247).

The importance of our existence within the world which is studied can alsobe seen in Aristotle’s account of our apprehension of first principles. Kaloutlines how Aristotle distinguishes between intuition and discursive reasoning.Discursive reasoning presupposes knowledge. First principles are, Kal arguesfrom Aristotle, something we have the potential to acquire because our mindhas come into contact with reality (Kal 1988, pp. 45–47). Because we have hadthis contact, our understanding (nous) can make the connection betweendiscursive reasoning and first principles.

All these examples point to conceptions of knowledge rather foreign to modernnotions: knowledge acquired primarily by seeing; knowledge of a world in whichthe knower has an integral part. But such concepts are not unlike the type ofknowledge we obtain from visiting museums. The museum makes heavy use of thevisual. It also provides that inclusiveness in which we ourselves are part of thespace in which knowledge is displayed such that we could, conceivably, create amuseum display of our own life’s narrative. This link between ancient Greekconceptions of knowledge and knowledge in the museum is, perhaps, not surpris-ing because museums are very old ways of imparting knowledge; they existedbefore Descartes and before the Middle Ages; the most famous museum of ancienttimes was at Alexandria. The Oxford English Dictionary says museums were

a seat of the muses ... a building or apartment dedicated to the pursuit oflearning or the arts. (Shorter OED 1973)

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This, in itself, is not news. The address of a nineteenth century speaker, NewtonHorace Winchell to the Saint Paul Academy of Sciences in 1891 is quoted byRoberts:

one must look back to the ancient Grecian museum with its commitment to purestudy and contemplation for the “true museum”. (Roberts 1997, p. 22)6

So to investigate how a museum can be a space of Aristotelian knowledge, weshould look more closely at Aristotle’s concept of study. Aristotle says in book X,chapter 7 of the Nicomachean Ethics (NE), that

if happiness is activity in accord with virtue, it is reasonable for it to accord withthe supreme virtue, which will be the virtue of the best thing….. Hence completehappiness will be its activity in accord with its proper virtue; and we have saidthat this activity is the activity of study. (NE, book X, chapter 7, ss1)

The Greek word for study is theoria. This is what the notes of Irwin’s translationof Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics says concerning it:

Theorein is cognate with theasthai (gaze on) and indicates having something inclear view and attending to it. (Irwin 1999, p. 349)

Irwin describes the following uses of the word for study:

(1) Theoria of a question or subject is looking at it, examining it carefully andseeing the answer.

(2) Theorein is the activity of a capacity for knowledge…(3) In Aristotle’s more specialised use, theorein refers to the contemplative

study that he identifies with happiness, or with a part of it. This is the sensein which I “study” a face or a scene that I already have in full view (ibid.).

The second use indicates that this knowledge must be out where you can see it.Because theorein is an activity, it is something which, if you stop it suddenly isnone the less complete. (Compare taking a walk, which is complete if you stop,to walking to the shops, which is incomplete if you do not reach the shops and isconsequently a process and not an activity.) To have a capacity for knowledge,might be that I, to quote Irwin, “know Pythagoras’ theorem even if I am not think-ing of it”. For the word theorein to be appropriate I must be activating thatcapacity and contemplating the knowledge I have. So the museum, with its abilityto display human knowledge for our perusal, provides an example of Aristotle’sconception of knowledge. This is not just knowledge which is used as a means to

6. Winchell, interestingly, thinks the search for truth was central to the Grecian museum and thatits modern equivalent should move beyond education to research and have as an aim “conferencewith the writings of others” (Winchell 1891, p. 7). However, he has a modern emphasis on “individ-ual” search for truth in “laboratories and recesses of these great museums unseen by the public”(Winchell 1891, p. 8).

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an end and then put away. That would be knowledge as a process not as an activ-ity. One should, perhaps, be wary of Aristotle’s equation of study with contem-plation. Study for him is a path to the divine. He says

hence, if understanding is something divine in comparison to the human being,so also will the life in accord with understanding be divine in comparison with thehuman life. (NE, book X, chapter 7, ss 8)

Amélie Oskenberg Rorty writes an essay which addresses charges made againstAristotle that he never fully reconciles the practical and contemplative in hisphilosophy.7 She tries to show how the two can interrelate claiming that, thoughher approach is

not the solution Aristotle himself explicitly formulates, it is an Aristotelian solu-tion to the problem. (Rorty 1980, p. 387)

She notes that, in the contemplation which is theoria,

although the primary and paradigmatic objects of contemplation are the stars,and perhaps mathematical objects, the conditions for something’s being contem-plated are that it should be necessary, unchanging, eternal, self-contained andnoble. (Rorty 1980, p. 379 citing NE, book VI, chapter 1, ss 5)

so that

it is also possible to contemplate the unchanging form of what does change(Rorty 1980, p. 379).

For example, one can contemplate the unchanging form of our species:

even when the definition of a species is a pattern of a temporal life, that patterncan be comprehended in one timeless whole. (ibid.)

including the attributes whose actualisation is the species ergon,8 that is thevirtues (ibid.).

Here we should be careful not to be taken in by the associations of modernbiology which we would bring to the word species. With the ethics of Plato andAristotle our opinions concerning the good and the best are as much a part ofnature as our biology. As MacIntyre says, for Plato,

the nature of each kind of thing is to be specified in terms of the good to whichit moves, so that the adequate characterisation of human nature and the passionsas part of that nature requires reference to that good. (MacIntyre 1988, p. 77)

7. There are parallels with this in debate over museums; for example, Lavine and Karp say that amuseum can be either a temple or a forum (Lavine and Karp 1991, p. 3).8. Sorabji says of the word ergon that it is “not very happily translated function…the ergon of ahorse, or of one’s eyes or of a pruning hook is that which one could only do by using these things, orthat which could be done best by using one of these things” (Sorabji 1964, p. 302).

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Aristotle, following Plato, also says that our knowledge is based on nature. Hesays that it is due to a knowledge of the good and the best which we have as partof us, due to a combination of our human nature and our education (ibid.).Hence, for Plato and Aristotle, notions of the fine and the noble and what is fineand noble for us are included in what is natural for us.

It is arguable, therefore, that one can have theoria of narrative museum exhib-its which tell of the lives of our fellow human beings. Aristotle’s ethical method,mentioned above, of saving the appearances or phainomena, was a method ofdiscursive reasoning called, in ancient Greek, epagõgê. It involved, as we haveseen, consideration of the opinions of both the wise and the many. In the narrativedisplays of the museum, some displaying the lives of individuals, some displayinga wider historical narrative told by an expert, we see the opinions of the manyand the wise displayed for our perusal. This has the potential to make epagõgê alot easier. Thus far, however, we are still concerned with sophia or theoreticalwisdom. Rorty’s attempt was to reconcile fully the contemplative with the prac-tical in Aristotle. This would include not only sophia but practical wisdom. Rorty’sattempt continues as follows: Aristotle recommends the life of theoria becauseit is self-sufficient (NE, book X, chapter, ss4) but has elsewhere noted that anapparently completely self-sufficient life could yet be improved by the additionof friends (NE, book IX, chapter 9, ss 2). Rorty notes that the Nicomachean Ethics’two books discussing friendship lie between the discussion of pleasure in book VIIand that in book X. Rorty says the books on friendship add the following insightto the debate on contemplation:

this is what virtuous friends, sharing and observing one another’s lives, come tohave: we come to be aware of our friends’ lives as forming a unity. Itself onecomplex activity. (Rorty 1980, p. 390)

In such contemplation

we move from the sorts of pleasures discussed in book 7 — the pleasures in theexercise of basic energeiai (activities) — to seeing these activities as part of asingle self-contained whole, with pleasure as accompanying perfection. (Rorty1980, p. 390).

Rorty apparently thinks that such contemplation will not increase one’s practicalrationality: she says (noting first that a phronimos9 need not be contemplativeat all)

the contemplative phronimos sees his ends as specifications of species-definingpotentialities. Of course such contemplative reflection does not generate a moreprecise decision procedure: contemplating humanity does not increase practicalwisdom by a jot. (Rorty 1980, p. 385)

However, in another passage she seems to hint otherwise:

9. Practically wise individual.

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just because…..the contemplator is not, as contemplator, interested in the moralconsequences of his insight into human nature; nevertheless, the contemplatorqua person can be. (Rorty 1980, p. 379)

Deepening of moral insight gained in contemplation of the lives of others canindeed be used practically on return to the world. This seems perhaps more logi-cal, as Rorty’s aim is, after all, to forge a link between the Aristotelian life oftheoria and the practical life, such that they can support each other, ratherthan, as she says happens in corrupt polities, only the contemplative life of studyproceeding uninterrupted (Rorty 1980, p. 392).

Having explored, with Rorty, the relation between contemplation and thedeepening of our moral understanding, we should begin to see why Aristotle,perplexingly, uses the word wisdom where we would use knowledge, and why hegives knowledge such a central role in his Nicomachean Ethics — a central role inthe good life, in fact. But between us and Aristotle intervene firstly, Judeo-Christian thought, broadening the moral community from the polis to the wholeworld (MacIntyre 1988, pp. 146–51) and secondly, the mediaeval asceticismwhich, at the birth of the modern university, tended to eschew the world andmaterial things. From this asceticism Descartes’ project followed (Taylor 1989,p. 143). Alasdair MacIntyre has attempted to update Aristotelianism for acontemporary stage, taking into account all this added complexity. If we exam-ine how his contemporary Aristotelianism works in a museum, this will help us tosee how a museum can be the site of tradition-constituted enquiry.

MacIntyre’s Updating of Aristotle

MacIntyre’s attempt to update Aristotle has centred on a famous trilogy ofbooks (After Virtue (MacIntyre 1985, henceforth AV), Whose Justice? WhichRationality? (MacIntyre 1988, henceforth WJ), and Three Rival Versions of MoralEnquiry (MacIntyre 1990b, henceforth TRV)) and one further book DependentRational Animals (MacIntyre 1999, henceforth DRA). He begins by combining thecontemporary moral theory of emotivism10 with the social theories of MaxWeber to produce a devastating critique of the moral discourse in large areas ofliberal culture:

the sole reality of this distinctively moral discourse is the attempt of one will toalign the attitudes, feelings and preferences and choices of another with its own.(AV, p. 24)

This rationality, he says, has permeated many areas of modern life and the onlycoherent responses to it are those of Nietzsche or Aristotle. The second book,

10. The proponents of emotivism — the idea that “this is good” really means “I approve of this, doso as well” (AV, p. 12) put it forward as a theory of all morality at all time, but MacIntyre sees it assymptomatic of our culture.

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WJ, is written to vindicate MacIntyre’s choice of Aristotle over Nietzsche.Kelvin Knight says of this book that it presents a two-stage theory. The first isMacIntyre’s substantive theory of practical rationality. That is that practicalrationality is Aristotelian and that

an Aristotelian response to the question “whose rationality?” is “that of plainpersons” (Knight 1998, p. 15 quoting MacIntyre 1992)

who basically reason along Aristotelian lines or else have reacted against doingso (Knight 1998, p. 15).The second, MacIntyre’s “meta-theory” about theory,should be understood in terms of the first (Knight 1998, p. 12). All it establishesis that

what may be called the problem of relativism or of perspectivism is in principlesoluble … Only a substantive theory might … solve the problem by demonstratingrational superiority over its rivals. (Knight 1998, p. 16)

The key concept in this book is that of tradition. In WJ MacIntyre says thatthere are certain entities which he calls “socially embodied traditions of ratio-nal enquiry” (MacIntyre 1991, p. 107). Examples he gives are “a line fromSocrates through Plato to Aristotle and onwards to Aristotelianism, includingthe Aristotelianism of Aquinas” and another, the line “from Shaftsbury throughHutcheson to Hume” (MacIntyre 1991, p. 107). According to Knight, what isimportant here is that these traditions of rational enquiry can compete anddemonstrate rational superiority one over the other. What is important inunderstanding MacIntyre here is that the reader does not look for an overarch-ing encyclopaedic world view. Instead MacIntyre, the writer of the book,stands within a tradition, that of Thomistic Aristotelianism, and claims thattraditions can defend one another rationally against challenge from othertraditions (Knight 1998, p. 16), rather as kung fu fighters fight one another andthe best man wins. Of course, it isn’t fighting: a key role is played, as we haveseen, by an individual who is imaginatively immersed in two competing tradi-tions and can represent the failings and strengths of each to the other. This isthe phronimos or practically wise individual, who takes on a more markedpresence in TRV

Truth..is not relative to a particular standpoint but is the telos, the final end, ofall versions of veritable enquiry, so that progress in enquiry consists in transcend-ing the limitations of such particular and partial standpoints in a movementtowards truth. (Knight 1998, p. 17)

Now let us place this philosophy into the museum space. I began by describing aVictorian museum in Edinburgh. Its most recent local equivalent is an interac-tive visitor centre called “Our Dynamic Earth” which takes us though the narra-tive of the world, starting from the Big Bang and ending with ourselves. Thisapproaches, using videotaped narrative, what Hooper-Greenhill has referred to

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(following Sola and Weil) as the “total museum” where “ideas not objects aremost important” (Hooper-Greenhill 1992, p. 208). However, it still representsthe Enlightenment-inspired “single view of the developing world” noted byMacIntyre, which, according to Bennett, found its completion in Victorianmuseums (Bennett 2002). Focussing, as it does, on our pre-history, it containsonly one narrative. But let us suppose for a moment that it didn’t and thatrather it contained a display of the history of philosophy and the different anddiverse traditions that represented. What would such a museum of philosophybe like? In fact, one could imagine oneself making such an interactive experi-ence of the histories of thought in terms of traditions given in WJ. Of course itwould be vast, and require the kind of intensive effort and labour that would berequired to build the M25. The point is that one could imagine doing so. In themuseum, the kind of “high tech” museum we are capable of creating now,the WJ view of traditions clashing on a historical stage can be represented. Thepoint is that the phronimoi, those people who can enter imaginatively into anunderstanding of each tradition, are we ourselves, the museum-goers. Suchpeople have already been described, by MacIntyre, as unique individuals whoare imaginatively immersed in both traditions. But in the museum, the exhibitcreator does this imaginative work for them. Thus the phronimoi do not need tobe exceptional persons who, through chance and upbringing, happen to havebecome immersed in two traditions. This thought experiment helps us to seethe centrality of the wise individual to WJ. It also shows us how important, asOnora O’Neill has pointed out, is the concept of intelligibility to MacIntyre’sproject:

MacIntyre’s restatement of the Aristotelian tradition in AV concentrates onthe restoration of intelligibility. He takes to task various modern conceptionsof human action and self identity which undermine intelligibility. (O’Neill1989, p. 146)

We can see that, if the different traditions of enquiry are displayed as museumexhibits, the phronimoi can walk round and decide between them. It also showsus that the phronimoi of WJ are essentially the same people as those of TRV,making judgments of a teleological nature; although in TRV, some are wiser thanothers and can direct the enquiries of the less wise.

The museum exhibits can thus be seen as the opinions of the many and thewise, displayed for judgment by the phronimoi.11 In the figures of the phronimoiwe have, of course, gone beyond Aristotle’s view of there being only a fewdecent wise persons capable of sound judgment to a view, as expressed byGeorge Elder Davie, that

the limited knowledge of the many, when it is pooled and critically restatedthrough mutual discussion, provides a lay consensus capable of revealing certainof the limitations of interest in the experts’ point of view. (Davie 1986, p. 262)

11. Practically wise individuals.

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And of course, in difficult cases, as in law, a single, acknowledged wise personor judge may be required. The point is that knowledge does not lie entirely withexperts and with expert use of statistics. It lies in intelligibility within this publicspace of knowledge. If you wish to study a community, do not study them anthro-pologically, but encourage them to produce their own museum, concerning whatis important and intelligible about their culture.12

Such a characterisation would seem to rule out the history of science ashaving any part in tradition-constituted enquiry. But in one of MacIntyre’sessays dated 1977, Galileo’s importance for the intelligibility of the history ofscience is stressed. (In contrast, presumably, to the usual stress on his appealto facts). Galileo, MacIntyre says, recasts the narrative of scientific traditionsuch that the work of the conflicting systems of Ptolemaic and Copernicanastronomers and their conflicts with Plato and Aristotle fall into place. Againstthe conservative adherents of tradition such as Burke, often presented simplyas opposing an unreasoned tradition to revolution, MacIntyre wishes to presenttradition as the progressive “bearer of reason”, periodically requiring revolu-tions for its continuance (MacIntyre 1977, p. 461). Doubting all your beliefsat once, “as Hume discovered”, is an “invitation to breakdown” (MacIntyre1977, p. 462), so the practice of questioning beliefs requires a tradition (ibid.,p. 462). MacIntyre says that Kuhn’s philosophy of science is superimposed uponPolanyi’s conception of tradition as unitary and without the latent conflict of aliving tradition (ibid., p. 465). Hence, for Kuhn, the movement from one para-digm to another must be a “conversion experience” or “gestalt switch”because, MacIntyre notes, for Kuhn “every relevant area of the rational isinvaded by the disagreement” (ibid., p. 466). Kuhn rejects his colleagues’charges of irrationality for this, saying that if episodes of science are irrational,“our notion of rationality needs adjusting” (ibid., p. 467). MacIntyre decides,rather, as we noted earlier, as did Roberts, that the additional features ofrationality not attended to are those of history and the concept of the superi-ority of one historical narrative over another. Hence, the phronimoi can makejudgments even on the history of science, based on its intelligibility. The telosor goal of enquiry is important here (MacIntyre 1990a, p. 189). Theoreticalstatements are to be judged by how far they express a contribution to what hasbeen achieved in an area and this criterion for theoretical success is a practicalone (ibid.).

Enterprises which issue in theoretical achievement are themselves embedded in,and have many of the central characteristics of, other practical enterprises.(ibid.)

12. It can be argued that such a move reverses the process, outlined by Bennett, in which Victorianmuseums used artefacts to allow the situating of human pre-history within evolutionary history suchthat large museums became “centres of calculation” which received artefacts, flora and fauna fromfar flung places, but devalued knowledge of persons from such sites. Such museums “equated thatwhich was distant from Europe with its pre-history” (Bennett 2002, p. 35). The move is also inaccord with earlier calls made by Bennett for control of the resources of museums to be in the handsof those previously only objects of study (Bennett 1995 , pp. 104–5).

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Phronesis enables a person to characterise “particulars under the correct univer-sal concepts” and relate them to practical ends (ibid.). It is not rule-governedand, therefore, without virtue, enquiry may not go towards its right telos (ibid.).MacIntyre answers possible objections to an “account of the history of enquiry soat odds with what actually occurs” (ibid.) in, for example, history of science, bysaying that this method, and the times when it has fallen into disuse, still bestexplain both areas of lack of progress in the history of enquiry and periods ofsuccess. The method makes the history of science more intelligible (MacIntyre1990a, p. 192).

Finally we turn to DRA, a book which deals with local communities of acknowl-edged dependence, attempting to ground MacIntyre’s philosophy in contempo-rary biology. One commentator, Porter, says that in DRA the notion of traditionappears to have no role (Porter 2003, p. 43). In fact, in a chapter entitled Proxies,Friends and Tuthfulness, we find ourselves urged to be advocates of the vulner-able, which will involve getting to know them so well that we

can speak as proxy for someone having put their actions to such questions as“what good did you take yourself to be pursuing in doing this?” and “why did youmisconceive your and our good in this or that way?” (DRA, p. 149). In this wayone learns the other’s point of view, and, by implication, the life history whichhas led to that point of view. One becomes, MacIntyre says, “in one sense of theword—friends.” (Booth 2004, p. 10 quoting MacIntyre DRA, pp. 149–50)

Seen in the context of philosophy of museums one could say that one becomes inthe position of someone who has seen museum exhibits created by such peoplewhich illustrate the narrative of their lives and what ends they were pursing orwere failing to pursue. This is the fine detail of the process of assessment ofknowledge taking place in the museum space; a detail particularly appropriatefor vulnerable, disenfranchised groups. Such groups can ask to create museumexhibits of their own, to illustrate their point of view. The museum-goers see thisand, thereafter, are provided with, if they choose to use it, the imaginativecapacity to act appropriately towards these groups.

What we have here is, in civic form, a way of enhancing communitarianfriendship. Sandel contrasts the communitarian friend where there is “mutualinsight as well as sentiment”, with the liberal deontological one where “I mighthope for the good of a friend … (but) … only the friend himself can know whatthat good is” (Sandel 1982, p. 181). Each, he says, depends on a correspondingview of the self (ibid.). It is communitarian friendship which is facilitated bythe Aristotelian museum and it depends on a communitarian view of the self; inthis case a narrative self elucidated by MacIntyre in AV (AV 1985, chapter 15)(Booth 2004).

So we have arrived at a statement of how the museum can be a site of tradi-tion-constituted enquiry. This is the contemporary Aristotelian museum in whichthe museum is the site of theoria and the enhancement of civic friendship andpractical wisdom. In it we can potentially conduct a version of Aristotelianepagõgê: sifting of the opinions and narratives of the many and the wise. It may

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hence be a place to explore many of the things we hand on13 as communities,including both our histories and our historical guilt. This type of museum joinsthe encyclopaedic museum, for example the Royal Museum of Scotland describedabove, and the post-modern museum. This last may occur within the encyclo-paedic museum, as when the power-relations behind some colonially-collectedcase of pots are investigated. Alternatively it may take seriously Roberts’ asser-tion that one may “evaluate possible versions of the world”. Then it is asdescribed by Hooper-Greenhill as being where:

a cacophony of voices may be heard that present a range of views, experiencesand values. (Hooper-Greenhill 2000, p. 152)

In Hooper-Greenhill’s characterization, the “post-museum” is

not limited to its own walls but moves as a set of processes into the spaces, theconcerns, the ambitions of communities. (ibid., p. 153)

Hence it begins to approach political concerns.What all these museums share is a serious approach to knowledge and the

purposes for which that knowledge is to be elaborated. It should be noted thatMacIntyre’s book, TRV, arose out of his Gifford lectures in which he questionedGifford’s project — which was broadly to instigate lectures which approached thestudy of theology in an encyclopaedic manner — and in doing so raised questionsabout the institution of the university itself. If a university should be, as DavidFergusson, quoting TRV, has described it, “a place of constrained disagreements”(Fergusson 1998, p. 126), then it would seem that a museum can be such a placeas well. MacIntyre also makes the point that it is seldom the case that a universityis as he has described.

Can we now realise, within the forms imposed by the contemporary university,the kind of and degree of antagonistic dialogue between fundamentally conflict-ing and incommensurable standpoints which moral and theological enquiry maybe held to require? (MacIntyre 1990b, p. 221)

MacIntyre is right in thinking that such dialogue is rare. Just occasionally, inuniversity philosophy departments committed to listening to all three of hisversions of moral enquiry, such debate may occur. That a museum should be asite of such rare debate is thus doubly interesting. Beth Lord, has put forward theidea that museums are places where we explore our fractured relationship withobjects, post Descartes’ Meditations (Lord 2006). It seems that what happenedwith the work of Descartes (and the ground for Descartes was prepared by themediaeval eschewing of the world (Taylor 1989, p. 143) was the separation ofthe museum and the university. One can imagine the ancient Greeks entering theirmuseum, which was also their place of learning, and wandering from object toobject; discussing, teaching, themselves part of the space of things to be studied;

13. In Latin trado, tradere, tradidi, traditum is the verb for “to hand on”.

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and, if we take Aristotle’s concept of epagõgê seriously, the opinions of the manyand the wise should be available for consideration.

However, we should also note that MacIntyre’s philosophy contains a seriouscritique of the interaction of bureaucracy and certain forms of knowledge.14

While, as Porter and Fergusson argue:

if a tradition survives and prospers by engagement with its rivals , then a conditionof tradition-constituted enquiry must be the maintenance of tolerance, pluralismand openness to change within our societies and these, of course, are among thecentral values of liberalism. (Fergusson 1989, pp. 126–7, quoting Porter)

Yet, also, within the museum, we have a space in which the hope of ethical tran-scendence exists and with that the possibility of criticism of society. Sometimesefforts to widen access by asking visitors their preferences can result in themuseum becoming merely a reflection of dominant aspects of the societyoutside. Thus as Hooper-Greenhill writes:

as shops take over gallery spaces, museum exhibits are returned to storage, anditems for sale take their place. Museum visitors as lookers and learners are repo-sitioned as consumers. (Hooper-Greenhill 1992, p. 202)

Arguably, instead, widening access can be approached by giving communities thetools to create museums of their own communities which can then come intodialogue with one another in the museum space.

To summarise

We have seen how the possibility of ethical transcendence in the museum canpotentially make it a site of MacIntyre’s tradition-constituted enquiry; how amuseum can be a site of theoria and the enhancement of civic friendship and prac-tical wisdom; and how MacIntyre’s contemporary updating of Aristotle would workin a museum. Finally, we have noted that an Aristotelian approach can ensure thatthe museum takes a serious approach to knowledge and the widening of access.

Tradition-constituted enquiry allows us to envisage the museum as assisting usin representing different narratives of identity or locality. It is hoped that, ifhandled sensitively, this could increase social cohesion and allow for constructiveexploration of difference.

Acknowledgements

Much of this paper formed part of my dissertation for the taught philosophyMLitt at the University of Dundee, submitted September 2005. As such I should

14. See, for example, MacIntyre (1979).

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thank Dr Beth Lord, Dr Rachel Jones, Professor Timothy Chappell and Mr LloydFields. I should also thank Professor Russell Keat for advice on its re-submissionfor publication and an anonymous reviewer at the Journal for Cultural Researchfor further comments. The beginnings of this paper were presented at theThinking About Museums Conference in Dundee in May 2005, at which I alsobenefited from hearing a talk by Mark O’Neill (of Glasgow City Council MuseumsService) which linked debates on political theory to the museum.

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