Orientalism qualifies as a rational tradition of inquiry in MacIntyre’s sense

Evidence

Representing, if not encapsulating, what I have called the paradigms of modernity and the Enlightenment, Orientalism has been defined by a potent doctrine of progress, with an omnipotent and metaphysically latent concept of linear history. Yet, as a largely liberal tradition it also lends itself to the characterization of being, in the coinage of Alasdair MacIntyre, a rational tradition of inquiry, one that embodies the imperatives of the Euro-American modern paradigm. In its entirety, and with all its internal disagreements and divergences across two centuries of its existence, it continues to lend itself to the definition (again by MacIntyre) that it is an extended argument through time in which fundamental agreements are defined and constantly redefined in the context of debates within it and (tacitly) outside it. If it does not exhibit on the surface all the features of a tradition (such as a conception of justice or a particular view of practical rationality), it is not because these features do not exist in it: they do, albeit in a tacit and unarticulated manner, for such paradigmatic features as a particular conception of rationality, a doctrine of progress, a linear notion of history, and a liberal conception of reality (including a latent theory of justice and ethics) all discretely govern its narratives and internal logic in structured ways. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 473

Categorization

• DEFINE: Applies MacIntyre’s conception of a rational tradition of inquiry as an extended argument through time to Orientalism itself.
• XREF: Connects to MacIntyre’s After Virtue and his account of traditions of inquiry.