Date Published:

Abstract:

This article demonstrates how Samuel Beckett’s Endgame fleshes out the implausible entailments of a world premised on the emotivist understanding of the self –– on a noncognitivist conception of metaethical anti-realism, which is precisely the moral theory of meaning that Alasdair MacIntyre sets out to dismantle in After Virtue. I delineate an analogy between MacIntyre’s critique of post-Enlightenment conceptions of obligation and Beckett’s staging of moral incoherence and interpersonal manipulation parodied throughout Endgame.

October 2025: Dr. Paul Andrew Woolridge is Assistant Professor in the Department of English Literature and Linguistics at Qatar University. He specializes in the history of literary criticism and theory, with a particular emphasis on modernist periodicals in Anglo-American letters. Dr. Woolridge has held appointments at Northeastern University, New York University Shanghai, and Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist (UIC). He has published in a number of academic journals, including The Cambridge Quarterly and Journal of the History of Ideas. His research areas include topics in cultural criticism, transatlantic modernism, and the relationship between literature and philosophy.