Integrity, in a world where the moral life is thought to have been exhausted by a schedule of rights, is even less in evidence as regulatory than common sense. The whole scandal of parliamentary expenses dramatised this point. On the other hand, the overarching role of prudence, leading people to caution about the dangers to their personal interests, is unmistakable. It is perhaps most dramatically exhibited in the recoil from commitment found in our profoundly unromantic age. Indeed, the most dramatic image of our moral condition is perhaps the popularity of pop concerts designed to help the malnourished in underdeveloped countries. These concerts are patronised by grandstanding moralists many of whom cannot even make the commitment of marriage. We have moved quite rapidly from the world of Tristan and Isolde to that of "Darling, I love you. Terms and conditions apply."

The most pessimistic view of our moral condition is given by the socialists who deny Adam Smith's view that in pursuing self-interest, we also promote the common good. Smith added, significantly, that he did not know that much good ever came from claims to trade in the public interest. We need to recognise how revolutionary this view was, and still is, because it accords to the thing called "self-interest" a certain moral value that traditional moralists and later socialists denied on the ground that virtue must involve self-abnegation. These traditional moralists remain a force in the land, and every time capitalist prosperity stumbles, they are on hand to declare that market societies are finished. They found one expression in the slogan "greed is good" uttered by Michael Douglas in the film Wall Street, supposedly revealing the vile rapacity of the modern world. The simplest corruption of this kind is simply to identify self-interest with the vice of selfishness. The most confused version of it is to be found in the slogan that people should be put before profit. If profit is being made, one might observe, some people, at least, are getting something out of it.

But then, as normative philosophers such as Amartya Sen sometimes observe, we who live in capitalist societies are not all bad. There is a certain "nobility" in modern Western societies and it is exhibited in the vast range of philanthropic and charitable enterprises we sustain. Some are state-funded, many more result from private contributions, and from the attaching of some kind of charitable "sponsorship" to a variety of testing experiences undergone in the name of altruism. Like all virtues, it requires the usual input of verbal declamations: these are people who want to "make a difference" or "give something back". And it is indeed in this balance between self-interest and altruism that we may find the dominant self-understanding of the moral life in our time. And as far as it goes, it points to perfectly real virtues in Western society.