Description: This ambitious and sweeping book presents a powerful argument against moral relativism and in favor of the objectivity of a theory of democratic individuality. Unlike much recent work in this field, the book does not simply adumbrate such a view. Rather, it develops the parallels between various versions of scientific and moral realism, and then reinterprets the history and internal logic of democratic theory, maintaining, for example, that the abolition of slavery represents genuine moral progress. The book also recasts the clashes between Marxist and Weberian, radical and liberal sociologies in the light of these moral claims, and sketches the institutions of a radical democracy.
Review Quotes: "The book presents an acute, historically informed, and unusually optimistic argument about moral progress. Striking in its intellectual breadth, [it] makes a significant contribution to the case that the social sciences are, at bottom, moral sciences." Joshua Cohen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology