This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th and 21st century philosopher and moral theorist, Alasdair MacIntyre's short address "Designing Our Descendants: Seven Traits for the Future", a presentation to the 1978 general meeting at the Hastings Center.

MacIntyre first discusses how intentionally designing descendants is a matter that has political dimensions, then sets out seven key traits that he thinks are most needed, and concludes with projections of what the lives of people in a society where these traits are widespread would look like.

The seven traits in a "new table of virtues" MacIntyre identifies and discusses are:

Ability to live with uncertainty (and an unpredictable environment)

Roots in particularity (a capacity for finding a particular and local way of being a home in the world)

A commitment to non-manipulative modes of relationship with people and nature

Finding a vocation in one's work (an ability to find a work that is peculiarly our own to do in the world)

Accepting one's death (recognition that there will come a time when one's life is complete)

Hope (a spirit of hope for which there cannot be adequate empirical grounds)

Willingness to take up arms (to go to war and to acquire the skill necessary to win a war)

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