Salamanca, just war, and the conflict between end and means
I realized recently that I have embarrassingly little understanding of the history of Spain. So in an effort to ameliorate the situation, I've been spending some time today Wikipediaing about the topic. In doing so, I ran across reference to the School of Salamanca, with which I was previously unfamiliar. It's an interesting read. In particular, its concept of natural law and the other philosophical forces leading to the understanding that war is the worst evils sufferable by mankind, and a step beyond that: the School's idea of when a war might be considered just.
It all begs a few metric fucktons of questions. How has Christian thought influenced the philosophical idea of natural law? How would it be different from a neopagan perspective? How would it be different from the perspective of a hard polytheist? Is war in fact one of the worst evils sufferable by mankind? Even if it is so from Salamanca's perspective, would it still be so from one of those other perspectives? What breaks down? How does this all affect what might justify a war? To what degree can we justly rely on predictions of the outcome of a series of events and actions in trying to argue for or against the justness of a particular war? How does the concept of justifiable evil interrelate with the Spanish Inquisition? Did one fuel the other, or are they both results of some other philosophical ideas? Where to those go if we take the philosophy of Christian monotheism out of the picture? Does modern war resistance draw from the same philosophical grounding as Salamanca? If so, does that mean that modern anti-war sentiment in the neopagan community draw from the thought of the Christian Salamanca school? Is that necessarily a bad thing? Good and bad aside, if modern anti-war sentiment does draw its basis from the Salamanca school, and if our earlier questions about religious perspective fundamentally change how a philosopher might value war and its justice, how should a modern pagan philosopher respond?
Tons of interesting ideas. Need to make some time to dig into them sometime.
(LJ Spellchecker Genius of the Day: Wikipediaing -> Vegetating)
It all begs a few metric fucktons of questions. How has Christian thought influenced the philosophical idea of natural law? How would it be different from a neopagan perspective? How would it be different from the perspective of a hard polytheist? Is war in fact one of the worst evils sufferable by mankind? Even if it is so from Salamanca's perspective, would it still be so from one of those other perspectives? What breaks down? How does this all affect what might justify a war? To what degree can we justly rely on predictions of the outcome of a series of events and actions in trying to argue for or against the justness of a particular war? How does the concept of justifiable evil interrelate with the Spanish Inquisition? Did one fuel the other, or are they both results of some other philosophical ideas? Where to those go if we take the philosophy of Christian monotheism out of the picture? Does modern war resistance draw from the same philosophical grounding as Salamanca? If so, does that mean that modern anti-war sentiment in the neopagan community draw from the thought of the Christian Salamanca school? Is that necessarily a bad thing? Good and bad aside, if modern anti-war sentiment does draw its basis from the Salamanca school, and if our earlier questions about religious perspective fundamentally change how a philosopher might value war and its justice, how should a modern pagan philosopher respond?
Tons of interesting ideas. Need to make some time to dig into them sometime.
(LJ Spellchecker Genius of the Day: Wikipediaing -> Vegetating)