Apprenticeship?

Fourth, in the same way that an apprentice learns from a teacher how to acquire the skills needed to practice a craft well, a participant in a tradition requires a teacher of the craft of inquiry. It is true, Maclntyre argues, that there is a resident, Inherent potential for transformation; otherwise, we could not learn what we need to know to take part in a tradition. But not only does a teacher “help actualize” such potential in a particular direction we would not necessarily find ourselves, a teacher is also the concrete authority on what we need to learn. “We shall have to learn” from a teacher, says Maclntyre, “and initially accept on the basis of his or her authority within the community of a craft precisely what intellectual and moral habits it is which we must cultivate and acquire if we are to become . . . participants in such enquiry” (63). Learning the rationality of inquiry is not a matter of striking out on one’s own but of submitting to the judgments of those who have already mastered the craft. In this way, the apprentice makes the “prior commitment" necessary to develop the habits that are prerequisite to becoming a competent member of the craft community (60-63).—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 183 (quotations from Alasdair MacIntyre's 1988 Gifford Lectures)