MacIntyre does not shrink from specifying the moral aspect: the large-scale manipulation of individuals. Not just manipulation of the way in which they organise their work, and thus their lives, but, more broadly, manipulation of the way they think about themselves and others.

to define something as mentally abnormal is merely to say that it deviates from the norm — that is to say, the social norm.

‘Mental health is produced socially: the presence or absence of mental health is above all a social indicator and therefore requires social, as well as individual solutions … A preoccupation with individual symptoms may lead to a “disembodied psychology” which separates what goes on inside people’s heads from social structure and context. The key

The double shift in thinking brought about by Christianity persists today and has now become part of our identity. First, we have come to perceive ethics and morality as outside ourselves, and as in conflict with our ‘natural’ impulses — meaning, of course, that natural impulses are bad. Second, we are convinced that we are accountable to a higher

Only the spiritual counts, the world of the soul. This is the aspect of transcendence to which I referred earlier. Two thousand years of Christianity has imprinted this conviction so strongly that we are incapable of reasoning in terms of immanence, of seeing ourselves as part of the wider natural world. Ton

Wherever quantitative yardsticks are used to measure quality, behaviour soon adapts to the system, invariably leading to a loss of diversity. This creates a problem for meritocratic policymakers: the fewer differences there are between candidates, products, or services, the harder it is to rank them. Don’t forget that in a meritocracy, the number

From then on, acting ethically became associated with ‘self-conquest’, a concept that still resonates today. We all want to behave well, but the flesh is weak, so we have to resist it, which means resisting ourselves. The more strictly and consistently we do this, the more moral we are; a ‘self’-conquest that takes no effort doesn’t count. Being

The ultimate goal of present-day education is ‘self-management’ and ‘entrepreneurship’. Young people must regard themselves as enterprises, and see knowledge and skills above all in economic terms — that is, as something they can use to increase their market value.

Depending on what you were told when you were assembling your identity, you are either certain of yourself, confident in your dealings with others, and sure of your own superiority; or, conversely, you are timid, ashamed of yourself, and shrink from interaction with others, convinced that they think you worthless. To use psychiatric jargon, people