Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre

Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (a.k.a. Alexander Chalmers MacIntyre), 96, of Mishawaka, Indiana, passed away on Wednesday, May 21, 2025, in Holy Cross Rehabilitation Center in South Bend. He was born on January 12, 1929, in Glasgow, Scotland, to Eneas John MacIntyre and Margaret Chalmers MacIntyre. He is survived by his wife of forty-seven years, Lynn Sumida Joy, and by his sister Joyce McCracken of Ayr, Scotland. He is also survived by his daughter Jean MacIntyre of Norwich, England, and by his son Daniel MacIntyre and by his daughter Helen MacIntyre, both of Brighton, England. Their children are Sacha MacIntyre, Fred Waine, Grace Waine and Sam MacIntyre.
Although MacIntyre's roots were in the North of Ireland and the West of Scotland, he was largely educated in England, doing his undergraduate work in Classics at Queen Mary's College (University of London) and his graduate work in Philosophy at the University of Manchester. He taught at several British universities, including Oxford and Essex, until 1970, when he emigrated to the United States. In 1966, he published A Short History of Ethics and in 1967, Secularization and Moral Change.
The American universities at which MacIntyre taught included Brandeis University, Boston University, Wellesley College, Vanderbilt University, and Duke University, where he was Arts and Sciences Professor of Philosophy. He became a faculty member of the Philosophy Department at the University of Notre Dame in two periods: 1989-1994, and from the year 2000, as the Rev. John A. O'Brien Senior Research Professor of Philosophy.
Among his books are After Virtue (1981), Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (1988), First Principles, Final Ends and Contemporary Philosophical Issues (1990), Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (1990), Dependent Rational Animals (1999), Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue 1913-1922 (2005), God, Philosophy, Universities (2009), and Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity (2016).
MacIntyre was President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in 1984. He also became an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Member of the American Philosophical Society. He was awarded honorary degrees by eight universities in the United States and the United Kingdom.
A Visitation will take place on Saturday, June 28, 2025, at 12 noon, to be followed by a Catholic Memorial Service at 1:00 p.m. at Kaniewski Funeral Home, 3545 N. Bendix Drive, South Bend. Interment of his urn will be at a later date at Cedar Grove Cemetery.
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