The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Ethics

Offers historical and topical chapters on the whole range of medieval ethical thought in Christian, Jewish, and Islamic philosophy.

Thomas Williams (Edited by)

9781107167742, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 December 2018

350 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2.8 cm, 0.72 kg

Ethics was a central preoccupation of medieval philosophers, and medieval ethical thought is rich, diverse, and inventive. Yet standard histories of ethics often skip quickly over the medievals, and histories of medieval philosophy often fail to do justice to the centrality of ethical concerns in medieval thought. This volume presents the full range of medieval ethics in Christian, Islamic, and Jewish philosophy in a way that is accessible to a non-specialist and reveals the liveliness and sophistication of medieval ethical thought. In Part I there is a series of historical chapters presenting developmental and contextual accounts of Christian, Islamic, and Jewish ethics. Part II offers topical chapters on such central themes as happiness, virtue, law, and freedom, as well as on less-studied aspects of medieval ethics such as economic ethics, the ethical dimensions of mysticism, and sin and grace. This will be an important volume for students of ethics and medieval philosophy.

Introduction Thomas Williams
Part I. History: 1. From Augustine to Eriugena Erik Kenyon
2. From Anselm to Albert the Great Ian Wilks
3. From Thomas Aquinas to the 1350s Eric W. Hagedorn
4. Islamic ethics Jon McGinnis
5. Ethics in medieval Jewish philosophy T. M. Rudavsky
Part II. Concepts and Themes: 6. Happiness Jeff Steele
7. Virtue Thomas M. Osborne, Jr
8. Law Jean Porter
9. Freedom without choice: medieval theories of the essence of freedom Tobias Hoffmann
10. Practical reasoning M. V. Dougherty
11. Will and intellect Thomas Williams
12. Emotions Martin Pickavé
13. Medieval Islamic and Christian mysticism and the problem of a 'mystical ethics' Amber Griffioen and Mohammad Sadeg Zahedi
14. Economic ethics Roberto Lambertini
15. Self-interest, self-sacrifice, and the common good John Marenbon
16. Sin and grace Eileen Sweeney.

Subject Areas: Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ], Islamic & Arabic philosophy [HPDC], Western philosophy: Medieval & Renaissance, c 500 to c 1600 [HPCB]