Spirits hovering over the ashes

In a series of topical explorations structured like a sonata, H. L. Hix identifies the consequences of postmodern theory through such issues as grief, freedom, beauty, obscenity, love, and sex, to its axiological consequences. A basic motif, postmodernism's distribution of meaning over space rather than time, recurs throughout the chapters, each of which in some way amplifies the book's underlying theme, virtue.

The "exposition" of the theme in the first ten chapters receives its "development" in the chapter, "Postmodern Virtue," and its "recapitulation" in the aphorisms of the final chapter.