Alasdair MacIntyre

After Virtue, published in 1981, argues that modern moral language often survives as fragments after the loss of shared moral traditions. MacIntyre uses that diagnosis to revive Aristotle, virtue, practice, and tradition as serious tools in ethics.

A practice is a socially developed activity, such as medicine, chess, or architecture, with standards of excellence built into it. Internal goods are rewards you can only understand by participating well in the practice, unlike external goods such as money or status.

Whose Justice? Which Rationality? from 1988 is the usual next step because it expands his argument about traditions of reasoning. Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry from 1990 then stages the conflict between encyclopedia, genealogy, and tradition.

Both labels matter. After Virtue made him central to the Aristotelian revival, and his later work increasingly engaged Thomas Aquinas, especially during his long association with the University of Notre Dame.