On the Decline of the Genteel Virtues: From Gentility to Technocracy

Chapter 1: Introduction: On the Ethos of Good Taste or Gentility.- 1. 1. The Antimony of Taste.- 1. 2.The Ethos of Gentility.- 1.3. The Historical origins of the Antimony of Taste.- 1.4. The Relation of Taste to Virtue.- Chapter 2: On the Origins of Aristocracy.- 2.1. The Conquest Theory.- 2. 2. Commercialization.- 2.3.Aristocratic Humanism.- 2.4. Ascetic Supernaturalism.- 2. 5. Hedonistic Materialism.- 2.6. Taking Custom Seriously.- Chapter 3:  The Ethos of Gentility in Greco-Roman Antiquity.- 3.1.Ancient Greece: From Warrior-Aristocrat to Citizen-Soldier.- 3.2. Aristotle on the Ideal of the Kalokagthos.- 3.3. Aristotle on the To Kalon.- 3.4. Aristotle on Phronesis.- 3.5.Aristotle's Genteel Republic.- 3.6. Aristotle and the Idea of Taste.- 3.7.The Downfall of the Classical City-State.- 3.8.The Nobilitas of Republican Rome.- 3.9. Cicero's Ethic for the Nobile.- Chapter 4: The Ethos of Gentility in Early Confucianism.- 4.1.The Decline of Feudalism in Ancient China.- 4.2.The Confucian Junzi.- 4.3.Confucian Virtue Ethics.- 4.4.Good Taste and the Confucian Notion of Li.- Chapter 5: The Ethos of Gentility from the Italian Renaissance to Victorian England.- 5.1.Castiglione and The Book of the Courtier.- 5.2.Gracian and The Art of Worldly Wisdom.- 5.3.The French Moralists.- 5.4.The English Gentleman.- 5.5. Shaftesbury and the Commonwealth of Taste.- 5.6. Burke's Defense of the Gentry.- 5.7.J. S. Mill on the Replacement of Aristocracy by Meritocracy.- Chapter 6: American Meritocracy and the Rise of Specialized Elites.- 6.1.The Colonial Gentry.- 6.2.James Fenimore Cooper on the Democratic Gentleman.- 6.3. Dye and Zeigler on American Elitism.- 6.4. From Status Group to Social Class.- 6.5. From University to Multiversity.- Chapter 7: Conservatism and the Genteel Heritage.- 71. Max Weber on Bureaucracy.- 7.2. Talcott Parsons on Collegiality.- 7.3. Deliberative Democracy vs. Monocratic Bureaucracy.- 7.4.The Genteel Political Tradition.- 7.5. Good Taste as the Principle of Gentility.- 7.6. The Moral Nobility of the Gentleman.- 7.7. The Gentleman as Cultural Conservationist .- 7.8.The Genteel Legacy.