Potentia/potestas absoluta: How the Jurists of the 14th Century Portrayed the Power of the Prince (original) (raw)
On the Idea of Potency. Juridical and Theological Roots of the Western Cultural Tradition, 2016
A Critique of the Metaphysical Concepts of Power and Potency in the History of Western Jurisprudence. Sweeping through the history of Western philosophy of law the Author deals with the metaphysical idea of potency as defined by Spinoza and Nietzsche, upsetting entrenched theories of jurisprudence. Castrucci first addresses how the idea of potency can change the meaning of the power ascribed to an omnipotent God. This brings together classical Greek philosophy with Jewish biblical exegesis, which the Author links through the juncture of Christianity. He then relates potency to the classic philosophical tradition in Aristotle's Metaphysics and its Arabic interpretations, particularly those of Averroès. This leads to the genesis of natural law theory in Western philosophy, from Augustine to Aquinas and from Duns Scotus to Ockham. Moving on, the Author examines the inherently problematic concept of political theology, pitting Spinozan-Nietzschean potency against Kant and the Enlightenment natural law to reveal the weakness inherent in the Enlightenment system. Finally, Castrucci applies the theories of Carl Schmitt to the philosophical rationalism of the Western tradition, showing how it has failed to contain absolute power in a juridical sense.
Revista española de filosofía medieval, 2020
It reflects the results of the colloquium relying on several original texts (see the useful index of manuscripts).
The Medieval Idea of Legitimacy and the King’s Two Bodies
Philosophy, Communication, Media Sciences, 2015
Based on Ernst Kantorowicz's work The King's Two Bodies, this paper intends to show that the idea of the sacred nature of political power, of the legitimacy which transcends the secular institutions is still alive in collective mentality. Analyzing the symbolism of the duality of the king's body (divine and human), Ernst Kantorowicz argues that the ideological foundations of the modern state are founded on in the idea that the kingdom is a mystical body whose head is the kingthis is possible through the divine hypostasis of his body. According to the fundamental Christian ideology of kingship, in the first centuries of the Middle Ages, the king is human by nature and divine by grace. Also according to medieval mentality, the human side of the king embodies a veritable quantity of opposite characteristics the mystery of the modern state can be interpreted on the level of a political philosophy which does not exclude the theological dimension of the secular society.
Power and Activity in Early Medieval Philosophy
The World as Active Power: Studies in the History of European Reason, 2009
The medievals held that a supreme rational power, God, is the cause of all being and all becoming. The world is created from nothing by a Creator, and is at all times sustained in its existence by that same Creator. The view squares well with Scripture and has some attractive consequences. For instance, if everything is due to the supreme rational power, then everything in the world is – in the end, and whether we see it or not – rational, orderly, good. The view is also associated with some very tricky puzzles, most notably a particularly convoluted version of the problem of evil. An associated, perhaps more basic problem is whether there exists any real power in individual beings of the created realm. If everything is due to God's power, then how can a creature such as a human being have any power of her own? In this paper I study conceptions of power in early medieval philosophy. Before Aristotle's works on natural philosophy were made available, Christian philosophy was to a large extent Platonist, though the term "Platonist" needs qualification. Apart from part of the Timaeus, the medievals had no first-hand access to Plato's thought. The major channels of Platonist influence were instead authors like Augustine, Boethius and Dionysius the Pseudo-Aeropagite. I will focus on two related themes in 11th and 12th philosophy: first, the discussion of modalities in relation to the doctrine of God's omnipotence, and secondly, the idea of will as a self-moving power. In his "Letter on Divine Omnipotence" (1065), Peter Damian (1007-1072) discusses the question whether God can undo what has been done. On the one hand, God can do anything; on the other, it seems one has to say that the past cannot be altered. Damian dismisses a proposed solution to the effect that God has the power to do only the things he "wills" (vult) to do. According to Damian, this solution entails the untenable view that God is only able to do the things he in fact does, and unable to do anything else. (Damian appears to infer correctly, at least if we grant him a premiss which both Damian and his opponents will almost certainly agree on, namely, that x gets done if and only if God wills x.) Not everyone would find the view untenable, however. Less than a hundred years later Peter Abelard (1079-1142) puts forward a carefully crafted argument in favor of the very position Damian rejects. On Abelard's account, God can only do what He in fact does and can omit only what He in fact omits. Abelard's position is fairly clear but it raises many questions. Anyone inclined to side with him will, it seems, have to rethink the relation between having a power and being able to act, and also between having a power and being subject to necessity. Damian's final position on the matter, on the other hand, is far from clear. The details of this discussion, and its background, where Boethius is an important figure, is the first theme. The second, related, theme is the power of the will in creatures. Plato claimed that the soul is a self-mover. In Augustine and the Christian philosophers who follow him, Plato's claim turns into a claim about 'will': the soul is self-moving insofar as it wills things, or, as Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) puts it, the will is an instrument that moves itself. Exactly what self-movement amounts to in Augustine's early medieval successors is not an altogether straightforward affair. In the second half of the thirteenth century, in the context of the debate between voluntarists and intellectualists, Anselm was often wrongly thought to having claimed the will is an active, as opposed to passive, power in relation to the power of intellect. In Anselm's theory of powers, however, there is no room for a active–passive distinction. In the paper, I will clarify Anselm's idea of will as a self-moving power and discuss how this idea influenced later medieval philosophical discussions about human and divine freedom, about the nature of the soul, and about the metaphysics of the created universe.
Continental Philosophy Reveiw, 2012
In line with his theory of secularization according to which all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts, Carl Schmitt argues in Constitutional Theory that people’s (Volk) constitution-making power in modern democracy is analogical to God’s potestas constituens in medieval theology. It is also undoubtedly possible to find a resemblance between Schmitt’s constitution-making power and God’s power as it is described in medieval theology. In the same sense as the constitution-making power is absolutely free from all normative ties, God’s potestas constituens, or rather, God’s potentia absoluta is free from such ties. Yet, unlike the Schmittian constitution-making power, God’s potentia absoluta was not, in medieval theology, originally intended as a description of some form of divine action: the absolute power of God referred to the total possibilities initially open to God. However, when the canonists started to employ the term potentia absoluta in their speculations concerning the papal plenitude of power (plenitude potestatis) by the end of the thirteenth century, they used it in a different sense than the theologians previously. According to certain canonists, the pope, by his potentia absoluta, could grant de facto dispensations from divine and ecclesiastical laws. Later on, this notion became a theological notion as well, but given its origin in juridical discourse, the constitution-making power, rather than being a secularized theological notion, is a theologized juristic notion.
2018
From the time of Pilate’s assertion of jurisdiction in Christ’s trial and Jesus’ teaching that such jurisdiction had been granted from above (John 19:10-11), sacerdotium et regnum have had a wax-and-wane relationship in their power claims. While the development of the doctrine of Petrine Primacy along purely theological lines is certainly a crucial backdrop for the unfolding historical drama, it is not the task of this paper to outline such development. Rather, this paper will focus specifically upon the jurisprudential development of the Papacy’s claims of plenitudo potestatis—primacy, independence, and at times supremacy in legal and temporal affairs, both canonic and civil. From Christ’s mandate to St. Peter Tu es Petrus and the canons of local synods to the juridic claims regarding Pontiff and Church vis-à-vis the civil power contained in the Latin Code of 1917, this paper will follow the canonical development of Petrine Primacy of jurisdiction and the bearings of such upon rights of judgment and legation in temporal affairs.