Virtue, practices, and traditions › Where the account needs testing

One challenge concerns harmful practices or exclusionary communities. If an activity has demanding standards and committed participants, does that establish its moral worth? MacIntyre's move from practices to a whole life shows why excellence within an activity cannot be the final test. But the question remains: which goods deserve a place in a good human life? The practice framework needs the wider moral inquiry it introduces.

A second challenge concerns inherited injustice. An appeal to tradition can protect the standing of people already authorized to define its standards. The fact that an arrangement has a history does not justify it. MacIntyre's description of a living tradition makes room for criticism, but a particular community must still demonstrate that it can hear challenges to its treatment of members and outsiders. That is a test to put to the account, not an empirical conclusion about all communities.

A third challenge concerns people with conflicting affiliations. Someone can inherit several traditions and reject parts of each. The narrative account asks how such commitments and revisions can become intelligible together. It does not follow that leaving a community makes a life morally unintelligible, or that remaining in one guarantees integrity. A satisfactory account must make room for truthful revision as well as continuity.

These objections help identify what the constructive argument has to establish. Naming a practice, telling a story, or invoking a tradition cannot substitute for defending the goods in question. The strength of MacIntyre's proposal lies in requiring that defense to engage with human activities and histories. Its difficulty lies in explaining how the resulting judgments can claim more than local authority.