Engaging recent debates on modernity and morality, W. Watts Miller shows that Emile Durkheim's sociology of the modern world has been misinterpreted because of failure to fully understand his ethical theory and provides a sustained examination of his ethics. He reasserts a scientific approach to ethics and demonstrates the continued importance and relevance of Durkheim's ideas.

Watts Miller highlights Durkheim's communitarian route to liberalism and abolishes ill-conceived ideas that Durkheim is at heart conservative in outlook. The author shows that Durkheim's social science is rationalist, not positivist, and, in tackling all the "big questions," stands comparison with the work of David Hume and Immanuel Kant.

Durkheim, Morals, and Modernity will be widely welcomed not only by students of social and political theory but also by scholars working in the fields of philosophy and history of ideas.