This magisterial study tells the story of a new way of doing ethics, starting in the seventeenth century, that was based on secular ideas of human psychology and universal accountability. It also shows that this modern approach remains relevant to us today and that it has a vibrant future.

Stephen Darwall teaches philosophy at Yale University. He is the author of The British Moralists and the Internal 'Ought', 1640¿1740 (Cambridge University Press, 1995), and of many other publications in moral philosophy and its history, including The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability (2006).

1. Grotius; 2. Hobbes and Pufendorf; 3. Locke and Cumberland; 4. Spinoza, Cudworth, Shaftesbury, and Leibniz; 5. Hutcheson and Butler; 6. Hume and Smith; 7. The British Rationalists and Reid; 8. Rousseau and Kant.