PROBABILITY, PRUDENCE, DANGER: THOMAS AQUINAS ON THE BUILDING OF THE LEXICON OF RISK

Pierre Januard

Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2024, vol. 46, issue 3, 421-442

Abstract: The Latin terms commonly used to signify “risk” are absent from Thomas Aquinas’s economic writings. Instead, Aquinas offers a lexicon of probability, prudence, and danger. This ternary lexicon brings with it a triple universalization of risk: first, a universalization through activity, including the activity of analysis considered as part of economic activity; second, a universalization through the agents, since everyone—the observer, the co-contractors, the prince, and the population—is affected by the risk; and, third, a partial universalization of its definition, since the lexicon indicates a risk that is not yet restricted by calculation, as the modern notion is, although some distinctions are already made by Aquinas. However, the lexicon describes only a risk of loss and does not take into account chance of gain.

Date: 2024
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Working Paper: Probability, prudence, danger: Thomas Aquinas on the building of the lexicon of risk (2024)
Working Paper: Probability, prudence, danger: Thomas Aquinas on the building of the lexicon of risk (2024)
Working Paper: Probability, prudence, danger: Thomas Aquinas on the building of the lexicon of risk (2022)
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