Classical Elements in the Political Thought of Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda

Abstract

In the context of Renaissance thought, references to the Classical World became conceptual models to construct not only historical and political experience, but also cultural identity. In this general context, I will analyse the role that classical elements play in the political thought of Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. I will focus, on the one hand, on the distrust with which the Dominican theologians approached the classicism of Sepulveda’s Latin, which does not mesh well with the unicity of the language and the terminology coined across the philosophical-ecclesiastical tradition. On the other hand, I will focus on the use that Sepúlveda makes of the Aristotelian concept of natural slavery; the notion of the Indians’ natural inferiority is irrelevant, and Sepúlveda does not use Aristotle to justify the Conquistadors’ brutal treatment of the Indians, but to deny the Indians their condition as political subjects.