Review of Inventing the Individual by Larry Siedentop (Allen Lane) Towards the end of this engrossing, illuminating book, Larry Siedentop describes a fourteenth century battle between two Christian monastic orders.  The Dominicans and the Franciscans were mendicant orders, begging monks who had abandoned the comforts of the cloisters to preach among the poor, largely in response to growing disaffection about the Church. At the heart of the struggle between the two groups, Siedentop suggests, lay ‘Contrasting accounts of relationship between […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History, Philosophy & Ethics • Tags: ancient greece, augustine, christianity, equality, history of ideas, history of moral thought, human agency, individualism, larry siedentop, liberalism, original sin