The Crown and the Conscience

Name: The Crown and the Conscience
Author: Ori Refael Peretz

Philosophy & Theology

Book and cover in development

A ruler’s conscience is never a private matter.Faith, duty and conviction can steady a ruler’s hand. Other people live with what that hand does. From Moses to Machiavelli, The Crown and the Conscience puts the moral authority behind political power under pressure.

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01The Crown and the ConscienceOri Refael Peretz

A ruler’s conscience is never a private matter.

The Crown and the Conscience brings faith, sovereignty and the morality of war together through the lives and ideas of Moses, David, Cyrus, Marcus Aurelius, Machiavelli and Maimonides. Its concern is the responsibility attached to authority: what can justify a command, when conviction deserves obedience and how a leader answers for the suffering a decision may cause. Religious belief and political duty meet in choices whose consequences fall on other people, inviting readers to consider the difference between possessing power and having a moral right to use it.

A ruler’s conscience is never a private matter.

Ori Refael PeretzBook and cover in development

02The Crown and the ConscienceOri Refael Peretz

Across the centuries.

The developing argument considers leaders and thinkers from Moses and Cyrus to Marcus Aurelius, Maimonides and Machiavelli.

A ruler’s conscience is never a private matter.

Ori Refael PeretzBook and cover in development

03The Crown and the ConscienceOri Refael Peretz

One question. Two forms.

Read beside The Shepherd and the Sword: one work examines leadership through philosophy, the other through fiction.

A ruler’s conscience is never a private matter.

Ori Refael PeretzBook and cover in development

The catalogueA ruler’s conscience is never a private matter.Book and cover in development

The moral burden of leadership.

The Crown and the Conscience asks what makes a person worthy of authority and what exercising it demands of their conscience. It examines the obligations of faith, the limits of morality in war and the responsibilities that come with governing other lives.

Faith, authority, responsibility.

Drawing on Moses, David, Cyrus, Marcus Aurelius, Machiavelli, Maimonides and historical leadership dilemmas, the book approaches the moral burden of leadership directly. Its companion, The Shepherd and the Sword, explores related questions through fantasy.

Moses
David
Cyrus
Marcus Aurelius
Machiavelli
Maimonides

A question shared across two books

The work sits beside The Shepherd and the Sword. The philosophical book examines the responsibilities of leadership directly; the fantasy narrative explores those questions through the choices and consequences of a story.

StoryThe Shepherd and the Sword

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The crown and the scales.

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Book and cover in development

Title: The Crown and the Conscience
Status: Book and cover in development
Category: Philosophy & Theology
Language: English

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