The theological stems of modern economic ideas: John Duns Scotus
Luigino Bruni and
Paolo Santori
The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2023, vol. 30, issue 4, 577-595
Abstract:
Voluntarism is a medieval theological doctrine that argues that God’s will takes precedence over God’s intellect and explores the consequences on the relation between Creation and the Creator. We show that Duns Scotus’s theological voluntarism had an important impact on his economic teachings. Moreover, we suggest that it opened an ontological path that fostered the theorisation of modern economic ideas. Voluntarism undermined the Aristotelian-Thomistic virtue ethics framework and the medieval mistrust of self-interest and commerce typical of voluntarism contrary, i.e., intellectualism. For voluntarist Duns Scotus, human being can promote unintentionally the common good, whereas intellectualism holds intentionality as its pillar.
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09672567.2023.2226396 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:eujhet:v:30:y:2023:i:4:p:577-595
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/REJH20
DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2023.2226396
Access Statistics for this article
The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought is currently edited by José Luís Cardoso
More articles in The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().