Based on an unfinished manuscript by the late Dallas Willard, this book makes the ase that the 20th century saw a massive shift in Western beliefs and attitudes concerning the possibility of moral knowledge, such that knowledge of the moral life and of its conduct is no longer routinely available from the social institutions long thought to be responsible for it. Via detailed survey of ethical theory from the late 19th through the late 20th centuries, Willard explains philosohy's role in this shift.