Libertad, derecho natural y republicanismo durante los siglos XIV, XV y XVI en Europa y Nueva España

Abstract

This doctoral thesis focuses on three fields: the history of philosophy, the political philosophy and the history of ideas. My purpose was to analyze various definitions of the notion of liberty in selected authors from the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. In this sense, my objective was to find their theoretical similarities with our modern concept of freedom. I point out the existence of two trends in the way of understanding liberty. On one side, there is a school that holds liberty should be maintained due to the existence of a set of inalienable natural rights. On the other side, for humanist thinkers even as diverse as Machiavelli and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, liberty is the result of political activity of the members of a community. Both definitions are very important is the subsequent debate on the rights and liberty of Native Americans in the New World. At this point, my work enhances the importance of the works of Francisco de Vitoria and Alonso de la Veracruz. These theologians based on Thomist literature recognize not only the full humanity of Native Americans, but they also award them with natural and political rights, among these the capacity of choosing their government. With this, Alonso and Vitoria grant Native American with basic political rights, but they also criticize their enslavement during the process of colonization of America.