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.