Revoking the Moral Order

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How did the concept of Western liberalism, rooted in the notions of religious toleration and universal human rights, evolve into the "anything goes" moral relativism of our own late twentieth century society? This is the question at the heart of David Peterson's fascinating examination of the Positivist tradition, one of the most farreaching philosophical movements of the past two centuries.The book begins prior to the official birth of Positivism with the rise of British Empiricism under David Hume and John Locke. From there, Peterson shifts focus to the writings of the French free thinker Auguste Comte, before moving on to the work of the late nineteenth century "Vienna Circle, '' and finally to the corpus of three seminal thinkers of the twentieth century: Bertrand Russell, Friedrich yon Hayek, and Karl Popper. By weaving together contemporary social and political debates (such as the rise and fall of "supply-side' economics, and the abortion controversy) with their antecedents in modern intellectual history, Revoking the Moral Order not only brings to life seemingly arcane philosophical texts but also provides important context for contemporary issues that sometime seem to be without precedent.