These are the outlines to a work I have written. It is currently in first draft form and needs to be edited and polished.
Morality and Modernity
(548 pages, 196,000 words)
This work is a profound and searching critique of the status of ethics and condition of community in the modern world. I try hard to avoid the nostalgic frame of reference, and acknowledge the extent to which modernity has been a liberation for many. I acknowledge, too, the dangers of reaction. But I still find cogent the critique of modernity as a cutting off of the individual from a sense of community and connections to others, with a concomitant loss of a sense of belonging, of a sense of identity and meaning. The text I have written draws heavily on German writers, particularly Marx, Nietzsche, and Weber. It's a powerful argument. But I intend to add another dimension through the French connection. Tocqueville claimed to have read Rousseau every day. He did so not because he agreed with him, but because Rousseau covered the most important issues and concerns, and did so with unparalleled moral-psychological depth. I'm particularly interested in Rousseau's work on customs, culture and the mores, the patrie, and how he combined this with an affirmation of transcendent truths as against conventionalism. I like this idea very much. I also agree very much with Tocqueville's emphasis on intermediary associations bringing otherwise isolated individuals together and integrating them within the social fabric. I would also emphasise Tocqueville's emphasis on "the habits of the heart," cultivating the character traits that knit communities together and keep them together. I also intend to have at least a section on the Utopian Socialists, starting with Saint Simon, examining Charles Fourier and his notion of universal harmony at length, taking in Proudhon and the notion of self-governing, self-managing societies, and ending with Comte. Comte is an interesting case. He is known best for his Positivism, but his work involves much more than that. Long before Nietzsche's "death of God," Comte saw the implications of the loss of an authoritative moral framework in modern society, and sought to fill the gap. If he was not successful in this endeavour - and no-one to date has been - then his attempts to address this central problem of modernity has great merit. To see the problem clearly is a condition of any effective resolution. From here I would include a substantial chapter on Emile Durkheim and anomie. The core themes I am addressing in this work were all central to Durkheim's work, and he offers a dimension not found in Marx and Weber. I would also look to say something on Frederic Le Play and the emphasis on the character-forming culture of discipline through work, family, and place/community. To some, that will sound conservative, to others, it will sound socialist. It is actually a mixture of both in looking to move to a post-liberal society.
Contents with page numbers
1 Rationale 4
1 Re-enchanting the world 4
2 Approaches 7
morality and modernity 9
the problematic of morality and modernity 11
3 Moral and metaphysical reconstruction 12
2 Community, Individualism, and Modern Society 23
1 Community and Modern Society 23
the search for community 23
2 Modernity and the Quest for Community and Personality 34
Community and Personality – the loss and recovery of form 38
The constitution of communities of identity, meaning and belonging 40
The New Communitarian Vision 47
Recovering personality and community 47
Fostering the politics of self-government 49
3 The Unit Ideas of Sociology and their Antitheses 53
The revolt against individualism 55
Liberalism, Radicalism, Conservatism 57
The critical view of liberal society, abstraction, and alienation 67
The unity of ethics and aesthetics 75
Conservatism, modernism, and nostalgia 82
4 The Loss of Community 103
Rationalisation/Modernism – the loss of community 103
Nietzsche, subjectivism, nihilism 106
Social theory and rationalistic desolidarisation 107
Modernity and its prophecies of doom and disaster 112
God and the moral framework 115
3 Capitalist Modernity and the Rationalization of the World 125
The non-academic philosophy of life against the tyranny and violence abstraction – against the rationalizations of social theory 125
The dialectics of hope and despair 131
The sociological critiques of modernity 131
Modernity and the future 133
Marx, Nietzsche and Weber 134
Marx and Weber on capitalist modernity 136
Marx, Nietzsche, and Weber – convergences and generational differences 137
Weber - rationalisation beyond capitalism – Fleurs du mal 144
Nietzsche and Weber and the fear of ersatz communities 148
Marx, Nietzsche, and Weber as key thinkers 160
Virtuous Communities fostering Habits of the Heart 172
Rehabilitating the ethical life as key to reinhabiting place 183
The tyranny and violence of abstraction 196
Prospects for Re-enchantment 202
4 The Moral Sociology of Nostalgia 207
The Problem of Nostalgia 207
Nostalgia – the story of loss 209
The Sociological Tradition 210
Sociology and the Nostalgic Frame 214
Nostalgia and German Social Thought 220
Nietzsche and nostalgia 222
Nietzsche’s concern with an authentic morality 223
Tonnies 225
Simmel 226
Weber in the context of social theory 228
Critical Theory 230
Martin Heidegger 232
Michel Foucault and Modernism 235
The Religo-moral Problem and the Post-modernist Crisis 237
The relation between society and religion 237
Conclusion on social theory 241
5 Nietzsche, the Death of God; or Nihilism and the Death of Liberalism 241
Why Nietzsche? 241
Nietzsche and the end of the moral and metaphysical standpoint 242
Statement of the problematic – why Marx, Nietzsche, and Weber – Nietzsche’s influence throughout social theory 243
An Overview 256
The universal-transcendent essentialist ethic incarnated in time and place 257
Liberalism, Nihilism and the Loss of Community 258
Ideology, Morality and Values 263
The nostalgic frame – the loss of unity and its recovery 263
Nietzsche against the nostalgic frame 265
Nietzsche and the practical truth of being and knowing 266
Nietzsche and the machine 269
Nietzsche’s life philosophy – Nietzsche’s cultural politics 272
Practical truth against abstract blueprints 273
Morality after god 274
Nietzsche's provocations 278
Organicism as a life philosophy 283
The ethic of embodiment 289
Nietzsche as a critic of modernity 290
The criticism of liberalism and the liberal ontology – the abstract individual and the abstraction of society 292
Personality and the autonomous individual 295
The Doctrine of the Little Things 298
6 God, reason, values, and grounds 301
Modernity and the loss of an authoritative moral and metaphysical standpoint 301
7 Under the Shadow of Modernity 350
Modernity, Subjectivity and Politics 350
Weber’s political sociology and ethics 352
Modernity, Politics, and Max Weber 362
Weber’s methodological individualism 363
The division between fact and value 364
Capitalism 373
Maturity and Politics 378
Politics, means, and force 387
Habermas, Reason and Faith 423
Habermas and authoritative standards 423
Anti-Prophetic Prophecy, Pessimism and Hope 437
8 Philosophical Anthropology and Hope for an Ethical Polity 438
Weber as the perfect interlocutor. 438
The Appropriate Human Regimen - Philosophical Anthropology 439
Weber’s concern with the appropriate human regimen 451
The New Dark Age 453
Refusing complicity with the Beast 455
Alasdair MacIntyre 456
Freedom that Enslaves 478
Transformative Practice and the Good of Human Beings 480
Eudaimonics – the appropriate regimen for the human good - MacIntyre in criticism of Weber and the modern moral condition 480
The Politics of Local Community 490
MacIntyre, ethical polity, the politics of local community 490
Engaging MacIntyre Critically: Flourishing, Modernity and Political Struggle 493
MacIntyre – critique of MacIntyre’s politics of local community 493
Closing Reflections: Politics and Strategy in the Present 495
Politics and community in the aftermath of Weber 495
Key themes 498
Reaffirming transcendent norms, truths and values vs conventionalism and sophism 499
Reaffirming transcendent standards against conventionalism 499
Essentialist politics – responding to criticisms 500
The problematic dualism of local community and public community 510