Has modernity failed? The front page of Liverpool Football Club’s website
declares its commitment to antislavery. It lays out its method for ensuring
that none of its clothing and merchandising stems from the work
of slaves. And just to remind you, the year is 2018. It is usual to date modernity
from Descartes, so we are nearing four hundred years of modernity.
In its self-conception,
modernity was the offer of clear and evident
principles that would free peoples and make them eager to communicate
globally to share the best ideas and the earth’s wealth. Obviously,
conscience has yet to receive those clear directives. Indeed, we seem perplexed
by a host of issues. There are more besides, but here are the moral
problems I discuss in this book: robots, fashion, Islam and sumptuary
laws, Nazism (fascism and race), rule of law and the managerial state,
embryos, family, migration, body modification, nature, vanity and extremes
of wealth, establishment, and subversion.
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