A culture built upon the ideology of individual choice is a culture of alienation, loneliness, and violence. In this provocative book, A. J. Conyers shows that Western culture was once informed by a sense of vocation, that men understood life as a response to a call from outside and above themselves. Conyers reveals with stunning insight how the quintessential institution of modernity is slavery, for the slave is the ultimate autonomous individual whose ties to family, church, and clan are dissolved. Cogently arguing for the affections that constitute real community, Conyers restores a sense of vocation and thus what it means to be human.