Acclaimed literary scholar and cultural theorist Terry Eagleton is Professor of Cultural Theory at the National University of Ireland, Galway, Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University, and Distinguished Visiting Professor of English Literature at Notre Dame. Terry Eagleton is the author of many books including The Idea of Culture (2000), Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (2002), the bestselling text Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983, 1996, 2008), Trouble with Strangers: A Study of Ethics (2009), and the forthcoming On Evil (2010).

In this major new book, Terry Eagleton, one of the world’s greatest cultural theorists, writes with wit, eloquence and clarity on the question of ethics. Providing rare insights into tragedy, politics, literature, morality and religion, Eagleton examines key ethical theories through the framework of Jacques Lacan’s categories of the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real, measuring them against the ‘richer’ ethical resources of socialism and the Judaeo-Christian tradition. a major new book from Terry Eagleton, one of the world’s greatest cultural theorists investigates ethical theories from Aristotle to Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek engages with the whole modern European tradition of thought about ethics brings together personal and political ethics and makes a passionate case for political love