In our moment when shared ethical languages seem impossible and where associational life is in decline, this reading and discussion group aims to investigate several related questions: What conditions do ethics require? Is it possible to create a shared ethical world that is neither oppressively exclusive nor so capacious as to be meaningless? Is ethics even a useful register through which to discern "a good life" or are they dependent upon other social/material questions?  For this session, we will read Chapters 1-9 of Alisdair Macintyre's After Virtue, in which he diagnosis our shared lack of a shared moral language. No need to do all of the reading or to have attended previous sessions in order to jump into this one!