Intellectual history of the Europe
Part 1 of the essay
Marcia Colish in her
chapter on the Legacy of Scholasticism claims that according to the most
influential theorists between the fifth and the thirteenth centuries, “the
right to property was not absolute.” Explain how Colish arrives at this
conclusion. In your concluding paragraph, give your evaluation/perspective on
views held by these theorists of property. What do you find acceptable or
objectionable in the medieval view of property?
At the analysis of a
question on the property in the Middle Ages very important was to consider that
self-maintenance of the direct manufacturer, reproduction him as member of a
community, corporation was the purpose of manufacture both in agriculture, and
in craft first of all, and maintenance of its feudal seigneur is equal also.
Profit reception, стяжание, accumulation of riches were alien большей to a part of members of this society; the exception was made by
church, a merchant layer of urban population and a nobility part, however
mainly already during an epoch of the "mature" and late Middle Ages,
instead of at the beginning of it. During the period of the early Middle Ages
the riches were necessary for a ruling class first of all as means of
consumption, satisfaction of personal and class requirements, instead of as an
accumulation and enrichment source.
Thus it is necessary to
mean mainly wood landscape of Average and Northern Europe. Pretty often people
lodged not in the big compact weights, and small groups of several families or
separate families at some distance from each other. Separated sometimes in the
big distances, separate owners cultivated the isolated sites. They have been
connected among themselves by using not divided grounds, necessity of
protection of the earths from encroachments of extraneous persons, requirement
for joint maintenance of an order, observance of customs, cult departure.
When some owners used
the sites located side by side, inevitably there were schedules to which all
should submit, but these schedules did not create any special right of the
collective property so alien to consciousness of barbarians, as well as the
right of a private property to the earth.
Thus, the property here
meant only the relation of the person to conditions of its manufacture or
reproduction as to the, and these conditions of production were not result of
work of the farmer, and its precondition. The property in the specified sense
was reduced to assignment of conditions of subjective activity of the making
individual and carried out only through manufacture. The concept of the general
property has completely developed only when the rights of separate owners to
grounds belonging to them as together with it there was a requirement for
differentiation of the general and private began to be individualised.
Part 2 of the
essay
In her discussion of
Thomas Aquinas and the use of money, Colish says that Aquinas “enlists
Aristotelian teleology as a weapon against the profit motive.” Colish then goes
on to conclude that Aquinas’ original argument is a “triumph of Aristotelian
metaphysics over economic reality.” Using your own words, give a careful
summary of Colish’s interpretation of Aquinas and show how effectively she
makes her case for the decisive influence of Aristotle on Aquinas’ theory of
money and its use.
Thomas Aquinas
recognises that trade and dealers are necessary in the state. Certainly, it
would be better, if each state made all that is necessary for it but as it is
seldom possible it is necessary to reckon with activity of merchants, even the
foreign.
But the trading activity
directed to a fair exchange, should used with requirements of Christian ethics.
Without stopping on the scholastic form of a statement and on purely
theological reasons, we will note the thoughts interesting from the point of
view of development of economic ideas.
Needless to say that all
versions of a deceit are exposed to strict condemnation. Lips of sacred Thomas
Aquinas the church demands, that the seller found out goods lacks and that the
buyer did not use an error or ignorance of the seller.
More difficultly and
more interestingly a question and laws of transactions in which the obvious
deceit (goods latent defects) is not present. In what measure the seller can
search for profits and rise the price, and the buyer to try to buy more cheaply
the usual price?
From the point of view
of Christian morals, profit search in itself is inadmissible. But depending on
circumstances possibility to admit additional compensation against a simple equivalent
on one of two reasons opens. The seller, conceding a subject belonging to it to
the buyer at the price of the higher, exact equality of equivalents, maybe,
rather than would demand that average compensation which is necessary on the
general conditions leaves a subject which deprivation makes for it a personal
damage and fall more considerable, than. This subjective surplus - a damage
rather with average value - should be compensated on justice. It is easy to see
that Thomas Aquinas 's these reasonings make a starting point so-called damhum
emergens.
Other motivation of
additional profit - as compensations for the special benefits resulting for the
buyer from a subject of sale is possible also. But this qualification Thomas
Aquinas does not recognise, because nobody can sell that does not belong to it,
and in this case special benefit is a condition entered, not dependent on the
seller.
Besides this subjective
moment ennobling value of a thing, Thomas Aquinas supposes also other rather
essential conditions, but, unfortunately, does not develop more in detail the
thoughts in this direction and is limited to that marks supervising reasons.
Thus, it becomes clear that for Thomas Aquinas the main business in the purpose
of any business. For the sake of the help poor, either household maintenance,
or advantage public it is possible to search for profits in trading business.
There is no need to extend, what gap is punched by this assumption in the
doctrine about strict balance of equivalents. The second assumption is even
more considerable - work grants the right to a merchant to search,
compensations - in this case profits. Thomas Aquinas does not explain, however,
conditions of such work. There is also in a shade a vital issue about ways of
definition of the fair price.
Other question is a
question on the credit. From the point of view of the doctrine about the fair
price Thomas Aquinas does not suppose an eminence of the price depending on a
delay of payment or its reduction owing to premature payment. As to using the
capital, whether it be money or other subjects, it cannot be aloof separately
from the subject and consequently any sale on credit is usury.
In scholastic motivation
the main reason of prohibition of sale on credit lay even more deeply. It stood
in connection with the general prohibition of a loan under the percent, leaning
against the doctrine about futility of money. Having acquired Aristotle's sight
on which money is only a criterion of value and the loan is considered mainly
from the point of view of transfer and returning of money, the scholasticism
with Thomas Aquinas at the head has developed curious, though also absolutely
false doctrine about impossibility of a percentage loan. The essence of this
doctrine is reduced to thought that subject transfer by one person to another
informs the last the property of a thing and the new proprietor thereby gets
using. Raises special compensation for using the known sum of money would be to
equivalently double sale of the same subject. The one who has sold a wine
bottle, cannot besides, raise compensation for the right to drink this wine.