Alasdair MacIntyre explores some central philosophical political and moral claims of modernity and argues that a proper understanding of human goods requires a rejection of these claims. In a wide-ranging discussion he considers how normative and evaluative judgments are to be understood how desire and practical reasoning are to be characterized what it is to have adequate self-knowledge and what part narrative plays in our understanding of human lives. He asks further what it would be to understand the modern condition from a neo-Aristotelian or Thomistic perspective and argues that Thomistic Aristotelianism informed by Marx s insights provides us with resources for constructing a contemporary politics and ethics which both enable and require us to act against modernity from within modernity. This rich and important book builds on and advances MacIntyre s thinking in ethics and moral philosophy and will be of great interest to readers in both fields.