An Ethical Modernity? offers a new view of Hegel’s doctrine of ethical life (Sittlichkeit) in relation to modernity. In this collection of essays, the authors investigate various aspects of this relation and its importance for today’s world.

Ethics Lost in Modernity: Reflections on Wittgenstein and Bioethics turns to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein as a guide to understand the immense success—yet great danger—of bioethics. Matthew Vest traces the story of bioethics since its inception in the late 1960s as a way to uncover a number of hidden assumptions within modern ethics that relies upon scientific theorizing as the fundamental way of thinking. Autonomy and utilitarianism, in particular, are two nearly unquestioned goals of scientific theorizing that are easily accessible, but at what cost? Vest argues that such an ethics enacts a thin moral calculation that runs the risk of enslaving ethics to scientism. Far from the depth of religious ethos and practices of virtue, modern ethics is lost amidst thin ethical theories, enacting a language game that instrumentalizes ethics in service of technological, bureaucratic, and professional end goals. He proposes that true moral living is far from anti–science, but rather is envisioned best when ethics and science are balanced with keen insights from ancient sacred cosmology.

This is the first study to compare the philosophical systems of secular scientific philosopher Mario Bunge (1919-2020), and Moroccan Islamic philosopher Taha Abd al-Rahman (b.1945). In their efforts to establish the philosophical underpinnings of an ideal modernity these two great thinkers speak to the same elements of the human condition, despite their opposing secular and religious worldviews. While the differences between Bunge’s critical-realist epistemology and materialist ontology on the one hand, and Taha’s spiritualist ontology and revelational-mystical epistemology on the other, are fundamental, there is remarkable common ground between their scientific and Islamic versions of humanism. Both call for an ethics of prosperity combined with social justice, and both criticize postmodernism and religious conservatism. The aspiration of this book is to serve as a model for future dialogue between holders of Western and Islamic worldviews, in mutual pursuit of modernity’s best-case scenario.

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This book illuminates an important dimension of the work of Max Weber. Weber’s theory of meaning and modernity is articulated through an understanding of his account of the way in which the pursuit of meaning in the modern world has been shaped by the loss of Western religion and how such pursuit gives sense to the phenomena of human suffering and death. Through a close, scholarly reading of Weber’s extensive writings and Vocation Lectures, the author explores the concepts of ’paradox’ and ’brotherliness’ as found in Weber’s work, in order to offer an original exposition of Weber’s actual theory of how meaning and meaninglessness work in the modern world. In addition to making a substantial and highly original contribution to the sociology of modernity, the book applies the theory of meaning extracted from Weber’s thought, addressing the claim that Weber’s work has been rendered out-dated by the supposed re-enchantment of the modern world, as well as discussing the ways this theory can contribute to our understanding of the development of specific forms of modernity. A rigorous examination of the thought of one of the most important figures in classical sociology, this volume will appeal to scholars of sociology, social theory and philosophy with interests in modernity, Weber and the concept of meaning.

This wide-ranging and accessible contribution to the study of risk, ecology and environment helps us to understand the politics of ecology and the place of social theory in making sense of environmental issues. The book provides insights into the complex dynamics of change in `risk societies'.

The work reimagines emancipatory possibilities in the face of reified capitalist modernity. The enlightenment resulted in a ‘disenchanted’ world, stripped of ‘anthropomorphised’ meaning and purpose. This world, in its capitalistic figuration, alienates us from others, and from nature. To rearticulate emancipatory possibilities requires a non-alienated relation to society and nature. Yet, modernist disenchantment cannot be undone by returning to pre-modern ‘enchantment’. Rather, such rearticulation calls for the recovery of ‘unalienated life’ from within non-reified modernity, by renewing its universalist dimension.

Analyzing novels by women writers from the 1850s to the 1930s, this book argues that representations of mobility offer a fruitful way to explore the location of women within modernity and, specifically, the opportunities for (or limitations on) women's agency in this period, considering the mobility of the female subject in the city and beyond.

Mohammad Fadel's scholarship on Islamic law and legal history ranges from medieval institutions and the history of Islamic legal interpretation to urgent problems relating to the modern reception and re-assessment of Islamic legal doctrine. Fadel's intellectual concerns focus primarily on the compatibility of the Islamic legal tradition with modern liberal political arrangements, but in his research and writing he also delves into the realm of premodern Islamic legal thought and institutions. His Rawlsian approach leads him to a political reading of the Islamic legal tradition, which he accomplishes by teasing out jurists' assumptions about politics, economics, and the domestic sphere. Fadel's readings of Islamic legal sources suggest that Islamic law remains relevant to a society in which legitimate disagreements over law and morality seem intractable. At the same time, from the Rawlsian perspective he adopts, Fadel reminds us that premodern Muslim jurists formulated Islamic law also under conditions of substantial controversy over matters of law and morality, as well as over questions of religion, politics, theology, and metaphysics. The studies gathered together in this volume adroitly illustrate Fadel's interest in Islamic law as a domain of Islamic political thought and as a framework that might be deployed in today's pluralistic and secularized societies.

'Postmodernity' is often claimed as a great transformation in society and culture. But is it? In this book Keith Tester casts a cautious eye on such grandiose claims. Tester draws on a series of themes and stories from European sociology and literature to show that many of the great statements from 'postmodernity' are misplaced. 'Postmodernity' is not the harbinger or expression of a new world. It is a reflection of the unresolved paradoxes and possibilities of modernity. The author establishes a clearly expressed and stimulating model of modernity to demonstrate the stakes and consequences of 'postmodernity'. This book uses a wealth of sources which are usually denigrated or ignored in the debates on 'postmodernity'. As such it sheds new light on old claims. But it never fails to acknowledge the profound insights of sociologists and other authors. The Life and Times of Post-Modernity is a continuation of the themes which Tester raised in his earlier books with Routledge, The Two Sovereigns and Civil Society .