The Moral Imagination

From Adam Smith to Lionel Trilling

In The Moral Imagination, Gertrude Himmelfarb, one of America's most distinguished intellectual historians, explores the minds and lives of some of the most brilliant and provocative thinkers of modern times. In their distinctive ways, she argues, they exemplify what Burke two centuries ago and Trilling most recently have called the “moral imagination.” Himmelfarb describes how each of these thinkers, coming from different traditions, responding to different concerns, and writing in different genres, shared a moral passion that permeated their work. It is this passion that makes their reflections—on politics and literature, religion and society, marriage and sex—sometimes unpredictable, often controversial, always exciting, and as illuminating and pertinent today as they were then.