In Person Event: Alasdair MacIntyre's critique of Technocracy and Emotivism

(note this is an in person event,[ an online one is linked here](https://www.meetup.com/philadelphia-philosophy-meetup/events/313682189).) One fundamental feature of modern life in all developed societies is the domination of society by large institutions with bodies of experts and managers. Such institutions have highly complicated official processes and chains of command in which power is carefully segmented and organized. This is a highly impersonal form of administration, in which rules and policies are constructed by a small group of executives and administrators and then are executed by functionaries with limited autonomy. The justification of this form of social organization is often technocratic, it has to do with the idea that the only way that effective decisions can be made with large populations is by employing bodies of specialized experts and decision makers who can design policies that are likely to effectively put human labor to its best use In a competitive struggle, either political or economic. This form of governance seeps into all institutions, even ones of medium size, and it leads to a particular form of self-presentation, a particular code of ethics and a way of thinking about ourselves and others that emerges into something like a philosophy of life. This form of life has many discontents. Many have talked about the climate of fear, irresponsibility, idiocy and boredom that is operative in many a mid-sized organizational bureaucracy, but there have been few examinations of the philosophical underpinnings of this form of governance. Related to the dominance of public life by technocratic administration, justified in terms of its efficient use of its means and not its comprehension of appropriate ends, is the growth in private life of a purely egocentric understanding of one’s life journey. Increasingly, the lives of individuals are interpreted in terms of purely personal preferences and subjective interests, with only very sparse appeal to…