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Asserting southern modernity. The recognition of “human nature” in sixteenth-century hispanic thought

Abstract:

This study outlines a vindication of Hispanic thinking, which, in the heat of the Conquest of the Americas, produced a powerful body of innovative reflections that broke away from the epistemic and ideological moulds of medieval theocracy. Largely introduced by figures in the Dominican religious order, this thinking was constructed within scholastic theological moulds, but actually opened a fecund, and intellectually ground-breaking territory in terms of law, ethics and anthropological philosophy. Its theoretical contribution had an extraordinary scope that has not always been valued by historiography. This thinking, which was a primordial and primitive step in the germination of modernity, took place in a Southern, and a Catholic context. It is true that this incipient modernity was left buried and isolated as of the last quarter of the sixteenth century, particularly after 1600. The baton then passed to Northern protestant countries, such as Holland. We believe, however, that this Hispanic thinking should be recognized and studied, as it illuminated the seminal category of human nature, with all the associated implications, for the very first time.