Political philosophy of the second scholasticism: Between thomism and modernity

Abstract

The difference between the political philosophy of the second school and that of the modern classics is above all metaphysical. The historically fundamental argumentative similarities are theoretically irrelevant to this difference, whose primary principle is the centrality of a (really) common good, manifested in a teleological ethic centred on virtue. The article reviews how, for this reason, a series of topics that early modernity articulates as aspects of a single political problem still constitute for these authors independent questions, only linked in the idea of political common good.