Virtue, Practices, and Internal Goods

Why does mastering chess feel deeply satisfying even if you win no prize? MacIntyre says it's because practices offer internal goods (rewards inseparable from the activity itself); chasing fame or money corrupts them.

MacIntyre rebuilds virtue around "practices": coherent, complex cooperative activities with internal standards of excellence. Virtues are acquired qualities enabling achievement of internal goods (e.g., strategic insight in chess, healing in medicine). These differ from external goods (money, status) that are competitive and incidental. Institutions sustain practices but often prioritize external goods, risking corruption. Virtues like justice, courage, honesty sustain practices against this. Without practices, virtues lose grounding; life fragments into episodes lacking coherence. C. Primary source excerpt “By a 'practice' I... mean any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.”— Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, Chapter 14, "The Nature of the Virtues" (2007 ed., p. 187)

The definition emphasizes cooperation, standards, and extension of powers—practices evolve through pursuit of excellence. Internal goods benefit the community of practitioners (new techniques enrich chess for all); external goods enrich individuals competitively. Virtues are required to sustain practices: without honesty, cheating undermines standards; without courage, challenges go unmet. This grounds virtues socially and teleologically, countering emotivist individualism.

Open-source software development is a modern practice. Internal goods include elegant code, collaborative mastery, shared innovation—virtues like honesty (crediting work) and justice (fair review) advance these for all. External goods (fame, jobs) motivate but can corrupt if prioritized (e.g., proprietary forks). When developers fork for status over quality, the practice suffers; virtues protect its integrity.

If virtues depend on practices, what happens when institutions dominate and external goods eclipse internal ones—do practices (and virtues) survive, or must new ones emerge?