Wim Decock

LESSIUS AND THE BREAKDOWN OF THE SCHOLASTIC PARADIGM

Ever since Joseph Schumpeter’s appraisal of scholasticism as the breeding ground of modern economic thought, with its normative natural law philosophy presupposing an analytical process in which market activities are carefully scrutinized, historians of economic thought have increasingly embarked on a journey to unearth the hidden treasures of this almost forgotten realm of thought. The success such an enterprise kept in store had already been made evident in the discovery of the quantity theory of money and the purchasing-power-parity theory by Marjorie Grice Hutchinson in the teachings of the so-called School of Salamanca, which was also said to have been prefiguring the utility-based price theory of the Austrians. However, if only because there is a lack of mathematical models and growth theories in the work of the scholastics, historians of economic thought also became aware of the need to get back to the basic moral and anthropological assumptions, different from ours, underlying their observations of the economy. This praiseworthy turn towards contextualization has led scholars to conceive of the economic reflections of the scholastics as belonging to a separate ‘‘paradigm,’’ of which a non-exhaustive list of distinguishing features might include the following: (1) market relations are personal and morally ruled by the virtues of charity and justice; (2) intention matters, and one cannot account for a deed by appealing to impersonal

Pre-contractual duties to inform in Early Modern Scholasticism

This paper seeks to highlight the early modern scholastic contribution to dealing with the issue of pre-contractual duties to inform. Bringing together different strands of thought, ranging from Aristotelian philosophy to Roman law, the 16th and 17th century scholastics developed adequate analytical tools to solve legal and moral problems arising from information disparities between contracting parties. While first looking at the different classical and medieval texts that shaped the early modern debate, this paper then goes on to give a systematic account of how the early modern scholastics dealt with duties of disclosure about both intrinsic and extrinsic defects in the merchandise. A final chapter looks at how the early modern scholastic debate was received in the Northern natural law school, before concluding that the early modern scholastics took a surprisingly negative attitude towards duties to inform.

Adrian of Utrecht (1459–1523) at the Crossroads of Law and Morality: Conscience, Equity, and the Legal Nature of Early Modern Practical Theology

This paper investigates the interconnection between moral theology and legal thought in the work of Adrian of Utrecht (1459–1523). It is shown that early modern Catholic theology as it was practised at the University of Louvain cannot be properly understood without reference to the scholarly disputes in the law faculties. The legal character of practical theology draws on a long tradition that reaches back at least to the late medieval manuals for confessors. The legal nature of Adrian of Utrecht’s moral theology, in particular, will be illustrated through an analysis of the sixth among his Quastiones quodlibeticae (1515). In the context of a discussion on the question of whether statutory provisions are binding in conscience, Adrian develops compelling ideas about the use of equity as a tool for the interpretation of laws. He then applies this general theory to the interpretation of the precept of fraternal correction.