Rules and ethics : perspectives from anthropology and history / edited by Morgan Clarke and Emily Corran.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Clarke, Morgan, 1972- editor.

Corran, Emily, editor.

Series:

Manchester scholarship online.

Manchester scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social norms.

Social ethics.

Social norms--History.

Social ethics--History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vi, 246 pages) : illustrations (black and white), digital, PDF file(s)

Place of Publication:

Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2021.

Summary:

This title investigates the pronounced enthusiasm that many traditions display for codes of ethics characterised by a multitude of rules. Recent anthropological interest in ethics and historical explorations of 'self-fashioning' have led to extensive study of the virtuous self, but existing scholarship tends to pass over the kind of morality that involves legalistic reasoning. 'Rules and Ethics' corrects that omission by demonstrating the importance of rules in everyday moral life in a variety of contexts. In a nutshell, it argues that legalistic moral rules are not necessarily an obstruction to a rounded ethical self, but can be an integral part of it.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of figures

List of contributors

Preface

Introduction: Rules and ethics

Part I: Rules enabling moral life

1 Conscience is tradition: Classical Hindu law and the ethics of conservatism

2 Manners and morals: Codes of civility in early modern England

3 Control of the self and the casuistry of vows: Christian personal conscience and clerical intervention in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

Part II: Rules and virtue

4 Rules and the unruly: Roman exemplary ethics

5 ‘For the love of God’? The First Commandment and sacramental confession in early modern Catholic Europe

Counting good and bad deeds under military rule: Islam and divine bookkeeping in Nablus (Palestine)

Part III: Rules about rules

7 Tactics of transformation: Self-formation and the multiplicity of authority in Polish conversions to Judaism

8 Conscience and action in the Islamic madhhab-law tradition

9 Comparing casuistries: Rules, rigour and relaxation in Islam and Christianity

Afterword

Index

Notes:

Also issued in print: 2021.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (viewed on February 23, 2026).

ISBN:

9781526166456

1526166453

9781526148896

1526148897

9781526148919

1526148919

OCLC:

1262371752