Every culture is characterised in part by what it conceals and obscures from view, by what its habits of mind prevent it from ackonwledging and appropriating. We err therefore in so largely, sometimes exclusively writing the history of ideas, of science, of art, of culture in general in terms of positive achievement. Culture is present also in failure and it can in crucial respects blind the educated to what needs to be seen. So it was with the failure to understand the work of Aquinas in the late Middle Ages. So perhaps it may be with us... . p. 169
This is a rather a gloomy - characteristically grumpy we might say - assessment of the state of intellectual enquiry! MacIntyre characterises the reception of Aquinas' grand synthesis of Aristotle and Augustine as a rank failure, with the usual suspects - Occam and Scotus - taking a beating on this. And in Meister Eckhart's sermons, the business of theological thinking becomes (for MacIntyre) separated from rational thinking: preaching becomes a matter of rhetorical effect, a 'mere rationalization of the preacher's processes'. This effect MacIntyre sees very much in evidence today.
