Description
Book SynopsisConscience offers a detailed historical survey of the concept of conscience from ancient times, through the Middle Ages, and up to more modern philosophers.
Trade Review“There are books that get more attention than they deserve, and there are books that, due to unfortunate historical contingencies, suffer unjust neglect. Stoker’s Conscience is one of the latter. Though Scheler and Heidegger recognized the significance of Stoker’s book when it first appeared in 1925, it did not get the reception that it merited. Philip Blosser has done an important work of retrieval by translating this work and making it available again. Everyone interested in the primordial human phenomenon of conscience has something to learn from Stoker. Notre Dame Press has given us a major new resource for a fundamental issue of philosophy.” —John Crosby, Franciscan University of Steubenville
“Blosser’s scholarship is excellent. He has done the tedious work, important to scholars, of correcting Stoker’s references to his source literature when they are in error regarding date or place of publication. The text is quite readable: it is stylistically up-to-date, and the description of obscure but important phenomena is clear.” —Eugene Kelly, New York Institute of Technology
"Few subjects are more important today that the question regarding the nature of moral conscience and its origin, development, reliability, and validity in a person's life. In this profoundly original and significant work, the late South African philosopher, Hendrik Stoker (1899–1993), addresses this question in a masterly way—a point highlighted by philosophers Martin Heidegger and Max Scheler—that is of relevance not only to scholars in the areas of moral and religious psychology, philosophical anthropology, but also to theologians, epistemologists, and those interested in moral issues generally. Translator Philip Blosser, who also wrote an illuminating introduction to Stoker's thought in this English translation of Stoker's 1925 German work, should be congratulated for retrieving Stoker's unfortunately neglected study of conscience. May this eminently accessible and readable work be enthusiastically received for its contribution to a crucially important subject." —Eduardo Echeverria, author of Divine Election: A Catholic Orientation in Dogmatic and Ecumenical Perspective
“The scholarship is solid and amazing, displaying a sound knowledge of related literature reflected in notes and wide-ranging references. Stoker was on the forefront of knowledge about the leading figures of various fields of study. His exposition on the ideas and conceptions of the leading intellectuals of his time is impressive and in many instances could serve as a brief orientation in the views of the authors discussed by him.” —Danie Strauss, North-West University
“Stoker sets forth his argumentation with force and verve. Equally interesting are the lengthy analyses of theories touching on this subject: Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, J.H. Cardinal Newman, Buytendijk, Bavinck and Hepp, of course.” —Philosophical Reformata
“Stoker’s work on conscience is of enormous value, especially in its historical range and experiential focus.” —New Oxford Review
Table of ContentsForeword by D. F. M. Strauss
Translator’s Introduction
Editor's Foreword
Author's Preface
1. Current Scholarship and Orientation
2. The Ambiguity of Conscience
3. Intellectualism and Bad Conscience
4. Intuitionism and Bad Conscience
5. Voluntarism and Bad Conscience
6. Emotionalism and Bad Conscience
7. Personal Evil and the Essence of Conscience
8. The Problem of the Genesis of Conscience
9. Some Theories of the Development of Conscience
10. The Reliability of Conscience
Appendix: Brief Biographies of Authors Cited
Bibliography of Works Cited
Index of Names
