The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Ethics

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.

• Explores the rich, diverse, and inventive traditions of ethics in the Middle Ages, an area of philosophy that has often been overlooked
• Discusses topics and people on their own terms while taking into account the historical context in which ethical thinking developed, as well as making comparisons between the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions
• Covers underexplored topics such as economic and mystical ethics as well as central themes like sin, virtue, law, freedom, and happiness