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Facticity in Francisco Suarez' political philosophy: a path to another Modernity

Authors

FONT OPORTO, PABLO

External publication

No

Means

Pensamiento

Scope

Article

Nature

Científica

JCR Quartile

SJR Quartile

SJR Impact

0.142

Publication date

01/01/2018

ISI

000439234400010

Abstract

It is possible to sustain that Suarez's political thinking is in transit from Middle Ages to a different Modernity. The core of this interpretation is this thesis: The motor of the Suarezian political theory is the achievement of the common good inserted in the facticity of the concrete human reality. Based on these premises, the principal elements of this theory are analysed here. Firstly, the community origin of political power, which originates from the base of the social character of human beings, created in this way by God. Secondly, the operational articulation of that power, through the absolute transfer to a ruler and the (relative) preference towards Monarchy as form of government, according to Suarez. Thirdly, the acceptance of the resistance to tyranny in certain cases and conditions. Therefore, one can understand that the flagrant contradiction between the total translatio of political power and the simultaneous admission of resistance means to reject the first, to proclaim the last as a limit to power, and open the possibility to a model of direct democracy.

Keywords

common good; origins of political power; democracy; limits of political power; right of resistance; civil disobedience; tyrannicide; Modernity; Ignatian tradition; facticity; Francisco Suarez

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