Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe

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Edmund Leites
Cambridge University Press, May 16, 2002 - History - 269 pages
This examination of a fundamental but often neglected aspect of the intellectual history of early modern Europe brings together philosophers, historians and political theorists from Great Britain, Canada, the United States, Australia, France and Germany. Despite the diversity of disciplines and national traditions represented, the individual contributions show a remarkable convergence around three themes: changes in the modes of moral education in early modern Europe, the emergence of new relations between conscience and law (particularly the law of the state), and the shared continuities and discontinuities of both Roman Catholic and Protestant moral culture in relation to their medieval past.
 

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Contents

Governing conduct
12
Laxity and liberty in seventeenthcentury English political thought
72
Casuistry and character
119
Prescription and reality
134
The new art of lying equivocation mental reservation and casuistry
159
Kant and casuistry
185
Mortal arithmetic Seven Sins into Ten Commandments
214
Optics and sceptics the philosophical foundations of Hobbess political thought
235
Index
265
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