• Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Undoing the Moral Empire: Moral Philosophy in Post-War Britain

Undoing the Moral Empire: Moral Philosophy in Post-War Britain

Hardcover

Philosophy

ISBN10: 1350457736
ISBN13: 9781350457737
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: Jun 11 2026
Pages: 272
Weight: 1.21
Height: 0.63 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

After 1945, Britain wanted to be a new country.

The authority of state and church were giving way, the Empire was dismantled, and it was no longer clear who was leading whom in matters of morals. Individuals were left to reinvent their ethical lives anew.

The lives and works of the philosophers discussed in this book were caught up this sea-change. Bernard Williams, Philippa Foot, Iris Murdoch, Richard Wollheim, Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre were all characters in search of a moral England, with a particular vision of the good society. From communitarianism to swinging Sixties' individualism, and radical theories of art - which understood questions of ambiguity, error and forgiveness more than the state ever could - this is the story of their sometimes convergent but often discrepant ideas on ethical life in the second half of the twentieth century.

Undoing the Moral Empire is a work of biography, social history and the history of ideas that masterfully reconstructs the shifting sentiments of the post-war era, reconfiguring enduringly relevant questions of freedom, virtue, and society.

Also in

Philosophy