The author of this work contends that an important responsibility of social enquiry is to engage critically with the moral difficulties and ethical dilemmas which have arisen with modernity. The book provides a wide-ranging and critical discussion of the respects in which issues of reflexivity, ethics and moral responsibility inform social and political thought. Smart explores the "ambivalent fruits" of social analysis exemplified by the works of Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Vattimo, Beck, Bourdieu, Goffman, Giddens, Levinas and Bauman.