This discussion begins from the dilemma, posed in some earlier writing by Alasdair MacIntyre, that education is essential but also, in current economic and cultural conditions, impossible. The potential for resolving this dilemma through appeal to ‘practice’, ‘narrative unity’, and ‘tradition’(three core concepts in After Virtue and later writings) is then examined. The discussion also explores the relationship of education to the modern state and the power of a liberal education to create an ‘educated public’ very different in character from the electorates of contemporary democratic regimes. It concludes with some remarks on the role of education in combating prejudice against certain kinds of human difference.

This essay takes issue with Alasdair MacIntyre's denial that teaching is a practice. It does so less by appeal to MacIntyre's concept of practice than by criticism of his conception of teaching. It argues that this conception, as reconstructed from adversions to teaching in a range of his writings, does less than justice to what good teachers accomplish; and that, if this inadequacy is rectified—as much else in his writings suggests that it ought to be—there are clearer grounds for acknowledging teaching as a practice.

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Addresses the issues inherent when analysing marketing philosophy and knowledge, illustrates by examples from various philosophers, pricipally Aristotle. Explores the relationship between knowledge and action, questioning what kind of knowledge informs good practice. Highlights two types of knowledge,``technical rationality'' and``practical judgment'', and the kinds of activities encapsulated within each paradigm. Covers the character of the natural sciences including the proven and established theories of the technicist logic and the varied and unpredictable nature of the social sciences, incorporated within practical judgment. Suggests that properties required by a trainee in the practical field in order to learn good practice and`j udgment'', include resourcefulness and flexibility.This paper began life in talks to a symposium on legal practice at the McCann Fitzgerald firm of solicitors in Dublin and to seminars at the Business School and at the Marketing Centre of University College Dublin. A version of it has also been presented to the faculty colloquium of the Law School at the university of Notre Dame. For invitations to give these talks I am grateful, respectively, to Mr