Conciencia y valor en Martín de Azpilcueta: ¿un agustinismo práctico en la España del siglo xvi?

Abstract

This paper argues that it is possible in Sixteenth-century Spain, characterized by the importance of the Thomist legacy, to identify a school of thought in the field of the practical disciplines (politics, ethics, economics) that can be described as Augustinian, in the work of the canonist Martin de Azpilcueta. His Augustinian approach, marked by a deep distrust of the coercive value of criminal laws for the human consciousness, is what can explain the consistency of the two most notable aspects of his thought: the development of casuistry in the field of moral theology and the first formulation of a quantitative theory of money. Thanks to the analysis of this Hispanic Catholic Augustinianism, characterized by quasi-legal mediation confessor between conscience and duty, we can also understand why this approach does not prevail from the eighteenth century in the evolution of political and economic ideas, as the idea of the market will be turned against such a moral mediation of consciousness.

Keywords

• agustinismo
• Martín de Azpilcueta
• conciencia
• economia politica
• filosofía hispánica
• teología moral