The Benedict Option

After Virtue closes with the famous passage: "We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another — doubtless very different — St. Benedict." The reference is to the sixth-century monk who, in the face of Rome's collapse, established the monastic communities that preserved literacy, learning, and the practices of the moral life through centuries of dark age. MacIntyre's point — widely misread as a call for religious withdrawal — is that in periods of profound civilizational transformation, the preservation of the conditions for moral life depends not on the reform of dominant institutions (which may be too corrupt to reform) but on the construction of new forms of community within which practices and virtues can be sustained. For the AI moment, the Benedict Option points toward deliberate communities of practitioners who preserve practices against the market's pressure.