title: Patterns of Moral Complexity
author:  Charles E. Larmore 
description: "....a solid piece of work--clearly written, admirably free of cant, historically informed, and analytically ambitious. It is a fine contribution to moral theory." Bart Schultz, Ethics January 1989
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  The Autonomy of Morality
  In The Autonomy of Morality, Charles Larmore challenges two ideas
  that have shaped the modern mind. The world, he argues, is not a
  realm of value-neutral fact, nor is reason our capacity to impose
  principles of our own devising on an alien reality. Rather, reason
  consists in being responsive to reasons for thought and action that
  arise from the world itself. In particular, Larmore shows that the
  moral good has an authority that speaks for itself. Only in this light
  does the true basis of a liberal political order come into view, as well
  as the role of unexpected goods in the makeup of a life lived well.
  Charles Larmore is W. Duncan MacMillan Family Professor in the
  Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Brown University. He is
  the author of The Morals of Modernity and The Romantic Legacy and a
  member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2004,
  he received the Grand Prix de Philosophie from the Acade´mie
  Franc¸ai