Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

508 REVIEWS / RECENSIONESnecessary not simply to juxtapose them but to compare them.Schockenhoff is consistently clear and informative about what differentfigures have understood conscience to be, what is rather weakeris his discussion of the relative merits of the different conceptions.The rejection of some clearly aberrant positions does not help thereader who is trying to discern critically the relative merits of moremoderate, but quite divergent, positions.This brings us to a last and perhaps decisive issue. In discussionsof conscience, including that of Schockenhoff, conscience is regularlyspoken of as if it were an agent over against the person whose conscienceit is. This understandable, and quite possibly inevitable,usage, is the source of considerable confusion. It mirrors the reflectivenature of human rationality in which something similar to sucha dialogue does occur. In order to describe this dialogue withoutfalling into dualistic or schizophrenic versions of human life it seemsto me that considerable conceptual rigour is necessary. The authorsmentioned by Schockenhoff in the introduction (Ricoeur andLevinas), but not in great evidence in the course of the discussion,surely constitute important resources in this regard.By way of conclusion one might say that Schockenhoff’s book iswhat it says it is: an ethical orientation. I understand this term tomean a work that will help the reader locate himself or herself in themidst of a complex debate. It points out the path taken by the investigationso far, notes options for proceeding and points toward thedesired destination. On all these scores it should now become one ofthe texts which orient discussion on conscience in the future.MARTIN MCKEEVER, C.SS.R.Werpehowski, William. American Protestant Ethics and the Legacyof H. Richard Niebuhr. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown UniversityPress, 2002, (Moral Traditions Series), 232 p.This book examines the legacy of the American Protestant theologianH. Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962). It does so by contrastinghis thought with four influential American Protestant ethicists: PaulRamsey, Stanley Hauerwas, James M. Gustafson, and KathrynTanner. In making these comparisons, the author seeks to demon-