This is an anatomy of the ethical and political pre-conceptions which underlie theories of justice. It contains evaluative comments on post-Marxists, critical theorists and American contemporaries. The author takes as her cue Hegel's description of modernity in which politics and ethics have fallen out of harmony with one another. Heller explores the nature of this breakdown with reference to the work of Kierkegaard, Goethe, Rousseau, Hegel, Diderot and Hutcheson.