The age of virtue

"In the eighteenth century 'virtue' was a word to conjure with. David Morse argues that, far from being shorthand for some rather vacuous establishment values, virtue was at the heart of a series of confrontations with institutionalised authority, whether political, patriarchal or imperial. It was in the name of virtue that power and hierarchy were challenged.

But with the coming of the French Revolution the very idea of virtue suddenly began to look distinctly old-fashioned - it seemed at once too elitist and too inflexible to respond to the rapidly changing circumstances of a democratic age."--BOOK JACKET.