The Aristotelian Background of Diego de Avendano’s Moral and Legal Thought

The article shows the existence of links in Diego de Avendaño S.J.'s (1594-1688) thought between probabilism and Aristotelian treatment of practical knowledge and prudence. Probabilistic thought of Avendaño can be described only through the analysis of long passages taken from the six monumenta...

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Autor principal: Hofmeister Pich , Roberto
Formato: Artículo publishedVersion
Lenguaje:Inglés
Publicado: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires 2017
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Acceso en línea:https://revistascientificas.filo.uba.ar/index.php/petm/article/view/7384
https://repositoriouba.sisbi.uba.ar/gsdl/cgi-bin/library.cgi?a=d&c=patris&d=7384_oai
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Sumario:The article shows the existence of links in Diego de Avendaño S.J.'s (1594-1688) thought between probabilism and Aristotelian treatment of practical knowledge and prudence. Probabilistic thought of Avendaño can be described only through the analysis of long passages taken from the six monumental volumes of his Auctarium indicum (Amberes, 1668-1686). Although strictly speaking Avendaño's political ideas are not those of an Aristotelian thinker, he tries to rely on Aristotle to support his thesis according to which the practical certainty sufficient for a right moral conscience can be the merely probable certainty - after all, the probable certainty is all that prudence can offer to the moral (and political) agent. Avendaño considers that his probabilism is consistent with a prudential treatment of practical knowledge, which it is also something that Avendaño relates to the sphere of law. One of the results of this connection between a probabilistic-prudential doctrine of moral rectitude and the demand for legal justice was the creation, not of a tradition of jurisprudence in legal sentences, but of a legal hermeneutic oriented by the community and by individual cases: in other words, the much criticized legal casuistry of the Jesuits.