Introduction

Over the past few months I have been (slowly) reading After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre. I tend to read slowly and have multiple books on the go at the same time hence the pace of my reading… However I was struck about how MacIntyres discussion of Emotivism engages with the Social Sciences and in particular how it contrasts Max Webers concept of Verstehen (understanding).

Therefore I decided to make a comparision of my definitions of these concepts and make them available here on my blog.

Definitions

Definition of Verstehen (from Swedberg and Agevall, 2016, Pg 356-359):

Verstehen is an interpretive method of understanding in sociology that seeks to grasp and explain the subjective meanings individuals attach to their actions. It involves both identifying what an action means to the actor and situating that meaning within a broader context of related meanings. This understanding goes beyond mere observation, often requiring empathetic or interpretive insight into motives, intentions, and perspectives. For Weber, Verstehen is not opposed to explanation but is essential to it, forming the basis for a causal explanation of social action.

Definition of Emotivism (from MacIntyre, 2007, Pg 6-20):

Emotivism is the view that moral (and more broadly evaluative) judgements do not state objective facts or truths, but instead function as expressions of an individual’s attitudes, preferences, or feelings. Such judgments are neither true nor false, and there are no rational methods for resolving moral disagreements. Rather than appealing to objective standards, moral language is used to express one’s own stance and to influence the attitudes or emotions of others.

At a basic level, the two definitions describe very different accounts of what moral or social understanding is and how it works—and they pull in almost opposite directions.

Comparison

MacIntyres argument of emotivism presents moral language as fundamentally non-rational and expressive. Moral judgments do not describe reality; they express feelings or preferences and attempt to influence others. Disagreement, therefore, cannot be settled by reason but only by persuasion or emotional effect.

By contrast, Verstehen (as developed by Max Weber) treats human action as meaningful and interpretable. Social inquiry aims to understand the subjective meanings actors attach to their behaviour, and this interpretive grasp is not opposed to explanation but is a necessary part of it. Rather than reducing discourse to feeling, it assumes that actions are intelligible within shared or reconstructible frameworks of meaning.

So, where emotivism emphasises subjective expression without rational resolution, Verstehen emphasises subjective meaning as something that can be rationally interpreted and explained.

Critique of Emotivism

The strength of emotivism lies in its realism about how moral disagreement often feels in practice—heated, persistent, and resistant to resolution. It captures the way moral language is often used rhetorically to influence others.

However, it is ultimately too reductive. By treating moral judgments as nothing but expressions of feeling, it struggles to account for:

• The structured, reason-giving nature of moral arguments (people offer reasons, not just emotions).
• The possibility of moral learning or progress.
• The distinction between better and worse arguments, which people routinely make.

It risks reducing morality to a psychological or rhetorical contest, thereby undermining the very idea of moral reasoning.

Critique of Verstehen

Verstehen offers a richer and more nuanced account of human action. Its strength is that it:

• Takes meaning and intention seriously.
• Recognises that social life cannot be explained purely in external, causal terms.
• Integrates interpretation with explanation, rather than opposing them.

Yet it also has limitations:

• It can be methodologically uncertain—how do we verify that we have correctly understood someone’s subjective meaning?
• It risks over-reliance on empathy, which may be biased or culturally limited.
• In difficult cases, meanings may be opaque, inaccessible, or even self-deceptive, raising doubts about how far understanding can go.

Overall Assessment

The two approaches reflect competing visions of human inquiry. Emotivism is deflationary, stripping moral language of rational content; Verstehen is interpretive and reconstructive, aiming to recover meaning and intelligibility.

If emotivism goes too far in denying rationality, Verstehen may be overconfident in our ability to access meaning. A balanced position would likely acknowledge that:

• Human action is indeed meaningful and interpretable (as Verstehen insists),
• But that interpretation is fallible and sometimes entangled with emotion and persuasion (as emotivism highlights).

In that sense, each definition exposes a weakness in the other: emotivism neglects meaning, while Verstehen may underestimate the instability and contestability of meaning in real human life.

Bibliography

MacIntyre, A. (2007) After Virtue. [2nd Edition]. University of Notre Dame Press. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/856189 (Accessed: 5 May 2026).

Swedberg, R. and Agevall, O. (2016) The Max Weber Dictionary. 2nd edn. Stanford Social Sciences. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/745418 (Accessed: 5 May 2026).