Renaissance scholasticism and the reception of the Aristotelian doctrine on the natural just: Philipp Melanchthon & Francisco Suárez

Abstract

The scholastic interpretation of Aristotle focuses on the idea of the natural law to justify the pre-political foundations of social reality. Now, there is no single great scholastic synthesis, nor is there a single Aristotelianism that is common to all the scholastic commentators of Ethica Ε 7. Thus, Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560), the so-called præceptor Germaniæ, depicts a different understanding of Aristotle than the Jesuit Francisco Suárez (1548-1617), because, as we will show, Suárez understands the just by nature as the right of practical reason, whereas Melanchthon identifies it with the theoretical knowledge of the moral principles implanted by God in man.