Moral Conscience through the Ages

Sir Richard Sorabji is Honorary Fellow of Wolfson College at Oxford University and fellow and emeritus professor at Kings College, London. He is the editor of fifteen books, and founder and general editor of the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series, in which more than a hundred volumes have been published.

• Introduction ; 1. Sharing knowledge with oneself of a defect: five centuries from the Greek playwrights and Plato to St. Paul and first century pagans ; 2. Christian appropriation and Platonist developments, 3rd to 6th centuries CE ; 3. Early Christianity and freedom of religion, 200-400 CE ; 4. Doubled conscience and double-bind: a medieval insight and a 12th century misconstrual? ; 5. Penitence for bad conscience in pagans and Christians, 1st to 13th centuries ; 6. Protesters and Protestants: 'terrorisation' of conscience and two senses of freedom of conscience, 14th-16th centuries ; 7. Advice on particular moral dilemmas: casuistry, mid-16th to mid-17th centuries ; 8. Freedom of conscience and the individual in 17th century England ; 9. Four rehabilitations of conscience and connexion with sentiment: 18th century ; 10. Critics and champions of conscience and its continuing re-secularisation: 19th to 20th centuries ; 11. Freedom of conscience, religion and speech: different balances in different legislations ; 12. Retrospect: Nature and value of conscience ; Index

Sorabji's encyclopaedic investigation is an excellent starting point for scholars investigating the many debates over the scope and significance of conscience.