“Alasdair MacIntyre: “I can only answer the question ‘what am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’”

It is the presence of a contextualizing story that renders human action intelligible. Intelligibility is not the same thing as morality; that is, intelligibility does not render an action morally righteous correct or evil. Rather, intelligibility provides us with the necessary context to begin to discern just what kind of action we witnessed: a good one, a bad one? A wasteful one, an expeditious one?

Moral judgements and moral action receive their intelligibility from grounding in narrative frameworks. Hence why the resurrected hero Lightsong needs to know who he was in order to know what he must do next, and why, by inhabiting the stories he heard as a child, emperor Susebron knows (at least he believes) what right and wrong are and can live accordingly.”