Facing Modernity: Ambivalence, Reflexivity and Morality

Barry Smart offers a wide-ranging and critical discussion of how issues of reflexivity, ethics and moral responsibility inform social and political thought. Through a critical discussion of the `ambivalent fruits′ of social analysis, exemplified in particular by the work of Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Vattimo, Beck, Bourdieu, Goffman, Giddens, Levinas and Bauman, this book submits that an important responsibility of social enquiry today is to engage critically with the moral difficulties and ethical dilemmas which have arisen in relation to modernity.