The problem of community, of founding and maintaining a legitimate moral order, is the problem of expression. The problem is, (how) do we find an example of moral/qualitative order in modernity (roughly the period from 1740 until the present day), an example that fulfils the expectation that authority and individual agency be principled, as outlined in Alan Blum and Peter Mchugh’s book ‘Self-Reflection in the Arts and Sciences’. The thesis examines the work of three authors: the Marquis de Sade, Fyodor Dostoevsky and James Joyce. The first two, particularly Sade, are interpreted as exemplifying dominant points of view apropos modernity and community. These dominant points of view, it is asserted, contain within themselves a fatal contra-indication re. the whole ambition to found and maintain a sustainable form of community which is adequate to the demands modernity imposes. It is only when we come to Joyce do we find a satisfactory terminus for the debate that has been generated. Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ represents a still-nascent form of expression that outmodes the dominant points of view represented by Sade and Dostoevsky and is the only truly modern example of ‘community; in our literature.