"Safeguarding the conditions of human flourishing and freedom is rarely a simple matter of fending off government intrusion or asserting one’s abstract rights. As readers of this volume will better appreciate, it turns out to involve a project of tending more deliberately to the overall social ecology, with attention to the complex ways people communicate and interact in shared spaces. Vischer’s erudite and skillful analysis highlights the thick interpersonal commitments situated within the myriad associations that mediate between individuals and the state. Only within this context will a healthy respect for conscience be guaranteed today." - Thomas J. Massaro, America Magazine

Our society's longstanding commitment to the liberty of conscience has become strained by our increasingly muddled understanding of what conscience is and why we value it. Too often we equate conscience with individual autonomy, and so we reflexively favor the individual in any contest against group authority, losing sight of the fact that a vibrant liberty of conscience requires a vibrant marketplace of morally distinct groups. Defending individual autonomy is not the same as defending the liberty of conscience because, although conscience is inescapably personal, it is also inescapably relational. Conscience is formed, articulated, and lived out through relationships, and its viability depends on the law's willingness to protect the associations and venues through which individual consciences can flourish: these are the myriad institutions that make up the space between the person and the state. Conscience and the Common Good reframes the debate about conscience by bringing its relational dimension into focus.

Introduction
Part I. The Relational Dimension of Conscience: 1. Conscience in law
2. Conscience in the person
3. Conscience's claims
4. Conscience and the common good
Part II. Implications: 5. Voluntary associations
6. Pharmacies
7. Corporations
8. Schools
9. Families
10. The legal profession
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Law & society [LAQ], Jurisprudence & philosophy of law [LAB], Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ]