This deceptively slender book is a deeply engaging study of multiple aspects of the late Scholastics’ political thought. Aimed chiefly at philosophers and historians of philosophy, it makes a strong (if somewhat implicit) case for the value of studying the many surviving works of moral theology from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As noted in the book's concluding pages (208–10), this is an area that has often suffered from enduring prejudice, given the bad name that casuistry has acquired. Schwartz ably guides the reader through the intricacies of the arguments, casting a critical eye on the validity of various viewpoints and conclusions. He provides useful insights into the long history of several issues that continue to be discussed by philosophers and politically engaged people today.

The book is structured in two main parts. The first, entitled “Civic Life,” has chapters devoted respectively to (1) “The Ethics of Electoral Bribing,” (2) “The Ethics of Tax Evasion,” (3) “Keeping Out the Foreign Poor: The City as a Private Person,” (4) “The Political Duty to Keep Your Secrets,” and (5) “Scandal and Inexcusable Portraits.” The last of these chapters may seem to be only tangentially related to the theme, but usefully explores (indecent) artistic representation as an important facet of communal life. The book's second part (“War”) has chapters on (6) “Conscientious Objection in War,” (7) “Patriotic Collaborationism” (on the question of whether or not a community is entitled to deliver one of its members to the enemy in order to save itself, and whether the individual in question should or should not consent to this), (8) “War and the Boundaries of Punitive Jurisdiction” (in fact mainly on “just war”), and (9) “Justice after Victory,” a chapter that explores practices such as killing, plundering, and enslavement that occur both during a war and after its conclusion. The “conscience” in the book's subtitle refers to a point that runs throughout the book—an individual's need to make moral judgments in the various situations described.

Although his main focus is on Spanish writers (both in Latin and the vernacular), Schwartz casts a wide net within the sea of the controversial literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I count some 130 authors from the period in the bibliography, from the very well-known (such as Domingo de Soto, Francisco Suárez, Francisco de Vitoria, and Hugo Grotius) to figures that will be known only—and sometimes not even then—to a small handful of specialists. Since many of these build on the views of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and other earlier writers, when relevant their perspectives are covered as well. This makes for a very rich mosaic and is a happy departure from the approach of other historical-philosophical studies that focus only on figures whose fame has endured. Schwartz has thus provided an unusually rounded account, and the chapters work well together, both in terms of their coverage and the way in which they build on each other. His treatment of the arguments is clear and succinct. Where a particular doctrine (e.g., the principle of double effect, 155–56) has also received treatment recently, he references the relevant literature and how the issue is viewed today.

There are just a few niggles. The book would have benefited from either a prospectus of the authors covered (with dates and main geographical areas of activity) or from an incorporation of these elements in the index. The Latin case endings are sometimes odd or incorrect. Long quotations are offered only in translation, so I have not been able to verify their accuracy, although they seem well executed. The publisher could have provided more thorough copyediting, and my paperback copy arrived with the first few pages out of sequence. More seriously, intellectual historians and others would have welcomed a more consistent engagement with the historical context (as in chapter 9), which might have provided insight not only into what authors argued but why they did so. And, given the fact that many of the discussions cover issues emerging from (or related to) the Holy Scriptures, I wondered to what extent different sources (such as biblical commentaries) might corroborate the analysis and conclusions given here. The discussion on conscientious objectors in chapter 6, for instance, has obvious ties to the Apostle Paul's instructions on obeying civic authorities in Romans 13.

These points should not detract from the book's remarkable and substantial achievements. It is hard to think of any other recent works that not only take the works of the Scholastics seriously but offer access to such a broad range of their thought, giving both students and scholars an appreciation for the subtlety, variety, and significance of their arguments.