Moral Philosophy on the Threshold of Modernity (review)

This is a collection of fifteen essays from a 2001 workshop, "Late Medieval and Early Modern Ethics and Politics," funded by the European Science Foundation as part of a network of meetings on Early Modern Thought. The editors intend the volume to reflect current historical and philosophical scholarship about the moral thought of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is arranged into three sections, reflecting three different themes: 1. Scholastics and Neo-Scholasticism; 2. Theories of Human Rights and Dominion; 3. Reformers and Humanists. These themes demonstrate "the range and diversity of moral philosophy between 1400 and 1600" (5), and show "the continuity between late medieval and early modern thought" (2).

The collection achieves these two aims. Essays treat such divergent schools of moral thought as Aristotelian scholasticism, casuistry, probabilism, post-Reformation Christian ethics, and neo-Stoicism. They discuss such figures as Suarez, Lessius, Gerson, Luther, Melanchthon, Daneau, Vives, and Muret. Each essay focuses on a figure or issue in the early modern period and connects the topic to relevant medieval material. So, for example, Risto Saarinen's "Ethics in Luther's Theology: The Three Orders" relates Luther's views of the three estates—church (ecclesia), household (œconomia), state (politia)—to the division medieval Aristotelian ethicists made between Aristotle's individual and social ethics.

If one of the strengths of this collection is the range and diversity of material treated, it is also its principal weakness. It is difficult to imagine that most readers will be interested in the essays of all three sections. As the titles of the sections suggest, readers interested in the views of humanists or reformers will look to the essays of the third section primarily. Those who are interested in backgrounds to modern theories about human rights and property will look to the second section. And the first section will appeal to those interested in scholasticism, probabilism, and casuistry. This is not to suggest that the three sections are unconnected. In fact, there are very strong connections between the first and second sections in showing how certain key notions of modern thought develop in the period from 1400 to 1600. And some of the essays of the third section present the views of certain reformers and humanists on related issues.

In the second section, Roberto Lambertini's "Poverty and Power: Franciscans in Later Medieval Political Thought" and Virpi Mäkinen's "The Franciscan Background of Early Modern Rights Discussion: Rights of Property and Subsistence" argue that concepts of individual rights and property—hallmarks of modern thought—emerge in the controversies surrounding Franciscan poverty. Questions about whether property or only its use is natural are connected to issues about individual rights of subsistence, particularly whether Franciscan poverty is against the inalienable natural right of self-preservation everyone possesses. In "Conrad Summenhart on Natural Rights," Jussi Varkemaa shows how Summenhart used Jean Gerson's discussions of jus to argue that a person is dominus (lord) of his own person and can voluntarily enslave himself to another without violating his natural right of liberty. Issues about individual rights are also at play in several essays in the first section of the book. Sven K. Knebel's "Casuistry and the Early Modern Paradigm Shift in the Notion of Charity" discusses how an innocent person is to behave under torture. At issue is whether an innocent should suffer death by maintaining his innocence or preserve his life by sacrificing his reputation through lying. This conflict led to discussions about the status of one's reputation—is it the property of an individual?—as well as the nature of the right of self-preservation. Similarly, Rudolf Schüssler's "On the Anatomy of Probabilism" discusses how the "possidentis principle" became a cornerstone of probabilism at the end of the sixteenth century. According to this principle, "a bona fide possessor of a thing may not be deprived of it as long as the unlawfulness of his possession is not significantly established...