Moral Culture

Keith Tester is Professor of Social Theory at the University of Portsmouth. Author of The Inhuman Condition (Routledge, 1995); The Life and Times of Postmodernity (Routledge, 1993); Civil Society (Routledge, 1992); Two Sovereigns: Social Contradictions of European Modernity (Routledge, 1992); Animals and Society (Routledge, 1991), this book was winner of the Philip Abrams Prize; and editor of The Flaneur (Routledge, 1994).

• IntroductionIndifferenceDutyGuiltVirtueConclusion

`In four provocative chapters - Indifference, Duty, Guilt and Virtue - Tester draws intelligently on the work of George Simmel, Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers and Zygmunt Bauman to explore what a morally informed sociology can say about the defining political experiences of our age... Tester′s book will provoke discussion and argument. Many will be infuriated by it. Tester has offered a challenge to liveral neutralism - who in sociological theory is prepared to take it up?′ Political Studies`Life is nasty, brutish and short, but sociologists have generally failed to provide an adequate account of human rights and have no satisfactory explanation of how strangers in the modern metropolis might live together in harmony and prosperity. Tester presents a challenge to na[um]ive notions of ethical neutrality and to what we might call caf[ac]e cosmopolitanism and yuppie intellectualism.... Powerful, bold and fascinating′ - Professor Bryan S Turner, Deakin University, Australia