In Medieval times Christianity took over as the dominant form of ethics and through feudalism, divine law organized social and political hierarchy. As religiosity was replaced by humanism, and the Catholic church by alternative viewpoints (Protestantism) political and social structures were torn apart, forcing change and a decline in the structure of feudalism and the opening of a new, more individualistic, some say greedy, system of capitalism. Philosophies of the Age of Englitenment further distanced themselves from using religion as the sole basis for structure with such philosophers as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Rene Descartes and others holding that human existence was more individual -- and therefore more dependent upon individual morals and judgements. Romanticism took these ideas and, through fusion, merged them with ideas on nature, emotion, and the grand capacity for actualization, but again, through the individual (Tumin and Plotch, 1977; (Bluhm and Heineman). The modern age is a study in the evolution of cultural and political diversity, also known as pluralism, or the idea that power in society is distributed into many groups and, epitomized by James Madison in The Federalist Papers that the unity and preservation of society...

There may be a societal goal, for instance, but the basis of any society is the individual. If individuals are born as Rousseau's blank slate, then society allows those individuals to actualize while still maintaining a moral structure.Modern democracy is based both on pluralism and the capacity for consensus (Hamilton, Jay and Madison, 1998). As we move more and more to a notion of "it depends," without at least a semblance of structure, both democracy and the freedom of the individual are at risk (Bluhm and Heineman, 48).
Bibliography

Bluhm and Heineman. (2007). Prudent Pragmatism and Consensus: Case Ethics in Monist and in Pluralist Society. In B. a. Heineman, Ethics and Public Policy: Method and Cases (pp. 39-48). New York: Prentice Hall.

Hamilton, Jay and Madison. (1998, July 1). The Federalist Papers. Retrieved September 2010, from Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1404

Hildebrand, D. (2003). The neopragmatist Turn. Southwest Philosophy Review, 19(1), 46-54.

Rescher, N. (2003). By the Standards of Their Day. The Monist, 86(3), 469-80.

Tumin and Plotch. (1977). Pluralism in a Democratic…