Conscience: Four Thomistic Treatments
Conscience: Four Thomistic Treatments presents a series of distinct essays by the Thomistic scholars Benoît-Henri Merkelbach, Reginald Beaudouin, and Michel Labourdette. Expertly compiled and translated by Matthew K. Minerd, these essays confront the difficulty of assessing the proper locus of conscience in moral theology—a difficulty as palpable today as when debates over casuistry and probabilism raged. Introduced by Minerd’s own expansive overview of conscience, the volume comprises Merkelbach’s “Where Should We Place the Treatise on Conscience in Moral Theology?” (1923) and “Treatise on Conscience in General” (1946); Labourdette’s Comments on Conscience (1940s); and Beaudouin’s De Conscientia (1911).
The seventh volume in the Thomist Tradition series, Conscience: Four Thomistic Treatments offers a technically rigorous, deeply insightful examination of a crucial aspect of moral theology.
Endorsements
“The retrieval of these Dominican moral masters on the topic of conscience marks a watershed moment. It is high time to face the question of how to integrate virtue ethics and casuistry, and these masters offer important directions. In translating and introducing these works, Matthew Minerd has outdone himself again.”
Matthew Levering
James N. and Mary D. Perry Jr. Chair of Theology
Mundelein Seminary, Chicago, IL
“Conscience: Four Thomistic Treatments is easily one of the most important texts on the conscience written in English. Minerd's scholarship brings together central Thomistic developments and synthesizes the resulting theory in a rigorous and eminently plausible way. The volume represents both the best starting point for those seeking to understand the conscience and a central contribution to senior scholars of this area. It is required reading for moral philosophers and theologians thinking about the mechanics of moral knowledge.”
Brian Besong
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Saint Francis University, Loretto, PA