Alasdair MacIntyre, a philosopher who metamorphosed from a London Marxist into a Midwestern American Catholic during a decades-long quest to prove there was an objective foundation to moral virtue — a lonely project that struck many of his academic peers as anachronistic yet drew a large, varied and growing crowd of admirers — died on May 21. He was 96.
His death was announced by the University of Notre Dame, where Mr. MacIntyre was a professor emeritus of philosophy. The announcement did not say where he died.
Moral beliefs are widely considered matters of private conscience — up for debate, of course, but not resolvable in any sort of final consensus.