For MacIntyre, contemporary Western culture is in stage three and consequently moral discourse recedes into personal opinion. The result is the Nietzschean emphasis on power as a way to assert one's opinion in society. MacIntyre argues that the key to our current crisis in moral discourse is the upshot of rejecting the Aristotelian notion of a telos for human nature. He contends that trying to create an objective basis to ground morality without a clear notion of human identity and the purpose of human existence was doomed to the failure that we now see.
In the face of this crisis, MacIntyre sees two options: (1) embrace Nietzsche's perspective and assert our moral positions through power or (2) reconsider the Aristotelian notion of telos and its moral companion the virtue tradition. He argues that recovering a robust virtue tradition is the way forward. MacIntyre argues that the power of Nietzsche's position "depends upon the truth of one central thesis: that all rational vindications of morality manifestly fail and that therefore belief in the tenets of morality needs to be explained in terms of a set of rationalizations which conceal the fundamentally non-rational phenomena of the will" (page 117). To counter this central thesis, MacIntyre argues that recovering the Aristotelian tradition -- "the most powerful of pre-modern modes of moral thought" (page 118) -- will provide the resources to counter Nietzsche's assertions of power.
MacIntyre then traces the virtue tradition from the heroic societies (where virtues are practiced and cultivated in family life) through Greece (where virtues are practiced and cultivated in the polis) to medieval conceptions (where virtues enable men to survive conflict). MacIntyre's brief history of the development of the virtue tradition raises a question: "in each case, how do we discriminate between the different accounts of important virtues?" (Chapter 14). He answers this question by identifying three threads that weave their way through each of these different accounts. First, each account of the virtues requires the notion of a practice. Second, each account relies on a narrative order of human identity and finally, each account relies on MacIntyre's definition of a moral tradition. For MacIntyre, the telos (the good life) of humankind is found in the seeking out of that good life and cultivating the virtues necessary for drawing nearer to that definition of the good life within community.
Written before MacIntyre (himself a well-known Marxist) became a Roman Catholic, After Virtue had a significant impact on my thinking in grad school. Also of interest would be his "sequels" to After Virtue: Whose Justice? Which Rationality and Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry.
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For an example of how MacIntyre's ethics plays out in modern Christian faith, there are two important books I have to mention as follow-up suggested reading: Hauerwas & Pinches' Christians among the Virtues and Virtues and Practices in the Christian Tradition: Christian Ethics after MacIntyre. I've used both in a seminar on Christian Social Ethics and they challenge students to think deeply and with specificity about the difference the virtue tradition makes in our own world.