ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author takes a different track and asks whether “therapeutic” is the best term to describe modern society. He explains four other ways of describing modern society that overlap with “therapeutic,” and largely leave it to others to judge which pejorative—and they are all pejorative—is best. The four competing views are that: there has been a loss of virtue; that there has been a weakening of negative sanctions; that there has been a loss of manners; and that modern society has become sentimentalized. John Gray has argued that modern society misunderstands toleration as moral neutrality. There has been a little grudging acceptance that virtue has a role to play in both the good society and the analysis of the good society. What is much less accepted is a focus of analysis on the sanctions that enforce virtue, especially the negative sanctions.
