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ABSTRACT
Political and economic discussions of inequality have boomed since the second half of the twentieth century, but concepts of equality and inequality are far older. Understanding the longer intellectual history of inequality helps deepen understandings of how the concept has changed over time, as well as across different societies, and how concepts of equality have been pre-figured to accommodate concepts of inequality. Concepts of equality have been informed by culturally relative theories of justice and beliefs about institutions that can help rationalise situations of inequality. This article examines how Scholastic examinations of equality in Europe during the Middle Ages came to focus both on the importance of property and proportionality, the need to differentiate between people of different status, and how this was developed by the so-called Second Scholastics during the emergence of the Spanish Empire in the sixteenth century and helped lay the foundations for the concepts of inequality that came to structure global imperialism.
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Notes
1 For example, Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and more recently Lantigua, Scholastic Theology, Justice.
2 Porter, “Justice, Equality, and Natural Rights Claims.”
3 Alfani and Frigeni, “Inequality (Un)perceived,” 57. Alfani and Frigeni’s article is based upon an empirical study of selected key words rather than contextual analysis of key texts.
4 Ibid., 23.
5 Ibid., 52.
6 Botero, The Reason of State, 79.
7 For more on the history of gender equality and natural law see Becker, Gendering the Renaissance Commonwealth.
8 Aquinas, Summa Theological II-II, in Bigongiari, The Political Ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas, 128.
9 Ibid., 128.
10 Ibid., 130.
11 Ibid., 130.
12 Ibid., 130.
13 Aquinas Summa Theologica, II-II, 139.
14 Ibid., 130.
15 Ibid., 131.
16 Rousseau, A Discourse on Inequality, 67.
17 Ibid., 71.
18 Aquinas, Summa Theological I-II, 49.
19 Ibid., 47.
20 Ibid., 49.
21 Ibid., 50.
22 Ibid., 50.
23 Ibid., 50.
24 Ibid., 106.
25 Ibid., 124–5.
26 Aquinas, Summa Theological I-II, 124.
27 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 80.
28 Ibid., Book V, On Justice.
29 Ibid., 85.
30 Ibid., 85.
31 Ibid., 84.
32 Aquinas, Summa Theological, 124.
33 Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics, 84.
34 Ibid., 129.
35 Ibid., 129–30.
36 Aquinas, Summa Theological, 124.
37 Ibid., 124.
38 Ibid., 139.
39 Ibid., 138.
40 The exact nature of the departure of the Second Scholastics from the classic Aristotelian-Thomistic schema has been subject to debate. Martin Van Geldren argues that the Neo-Thomists departed from the strict Aristotelian concept of justice, such that ‘the realm of justice lost its distinctly Aristotelian character and function’ and was ‘subsumed under moral law’; Van Geldren, “The Challenge of Colonialism,” 16.
41 Sepúlveda, Democrates segundo (2007), 285.
42 Ibid., 286.
43 Sepúlveda, Democrates segundo (1951), 36, cited in Pagden, “Dispossessing the Barbarian,” 171.
44 Columbus, “Digest of Columbus’ Log-Book,” in The Four Voyages, 37–76, 55.
45 Navarette, Colección de los viages y descubrimientos, CXXXIV, 246–7.
46 Antonio de Montesinos, “Christmas Eve Sermon of 1511,” cited in Bartolome de Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, Book 3, chapter 4, cited in Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice, 17.
47 Aristotle (1946), 13, cited in Valenzuela-Vermehren, “Empire, Sovereignty, and Justice,” 265.
48 Pagden, “Dispossession the Barbarian,” 165, see also Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man.
49 Sepulveda, 2012, cited in Valenzuela-Vermehren, “Empire, Sovereignty, and Justice,” 265.
50 See Skinner, Foundations, Vol. II.
51 Vitoria, On Civil power, in Vitoria: Political Writings, 13.
52 Thomas Aquinas, “Summa Contra Gentiles,” Book 3, chapter 81 in Sigmund, St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics, 11, cited in Van Geldren, “The Challenge of Colonialism,” 15.
53 For further discussion on natural slavery see Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man.
54 Vitoria, On the Indies, in Vitoria: Political Writings, 251.
55 Ibid., 251.
56 Ibid., 254.
57 Valenzuela-Vermehren, “Creating Justice,” 60.
58 Vitoria, On the Indies, 250.
59 Vitoria, On Civil Power, 9.
60 Vitoria, On the Indies, 240.
61 Ibid., 251.
62 Koskenniemi, “Empire and International Law,” 17.
63 Vitoria, On Civil Power, 9.
64 Vitoria, On Law, 177.
65 See Greer, Property and Dispossession.
66 See McClure, The Franciscan Invention.
67 Vitoria, On the Indies, 242–3.
68 Ibid., 250–1.
69 Ibid., 278.
70 Vitoria, On the Indies, cited in Simpson, The Encomienda in New Spain, 128.
71 Vitoria, “On the American Indians,” supra note 13, 3.1 § (278).
72 Brown, The Spanish Origin. Cf Kooijmans, The Doctrine of the Legal Equality of States.
73 Vitoria, On the Indies, 290–1.
74 Ibid., 291.
75 Irigoyen, Francisco de Vitoria, 113, cited in Cavallar, “Accomplices of European Colonialism,” 186.
76 Muthu, Enlightenment Against Empire, 273–5.
77 Williams, The American Indian in Western Legal Thought, 59.
78 Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty.
79 Ibid., 21.
80 Ibid.
81 Koskenniemi, “Empire and International Law.”
82 Ibid., 10.
83 Vitoria, On the Indies, question 3.
84 Sarmiento, Facundo.
85 Pagden, “Introduction,” in Beneyto and Corti, eds, At the Origins of Modernity.
86 Grant, “Francisco de Vitoria.”
87 Van Geldren, “The Challenge of Colonialism,” 32.