Political Theory and Jurisprudence in Gentili's

POLITICAL THEORY AND JURISPRUDENCE IN GENTILI’S DE IURE BELLI: THE GREAT DEBATE BETWEEN “THEOLOGICAL” AND “HUMANIST” PERSPECTIVES FROM VITORIA TO GROTIUS Diego Panizza* 1. Introduction This essay seeks to illuminate the “great debate” that modern scholars agree lies at the fountainhead of modern international theory. The main protagonists in the debate were on the one hand Vitoria—the best rep- resentative of the Spanish “theological” tradition—and on the other Alberico Gentili, who, in the detailed course of argument, rejected the theological tradition from the point of view of a “humanist” conception of things that was both coherent and very different. A further point of the essay will be to examine the role of Grotius in the great debate. His posi- tion, though very often seen by scholars as highly innovative, will emerge as of a piece with his general conservatism. My strategy in studying the great debate is, by concentrating on these emblematic authors, to identify the inner dialectic that forged new and distinctly modern structures of discourse on war and international order. And it is to show that, if there is any single founding father of modern international theory, that father is Alberico Gentili.1 To study the debate in this way brings two points into relief. First, it serves to verify the heuristic validity of the general scheme of inter- pretation that classifies the ideas about war that were then current in * Director of the Scientific Committee of the Centro Internazionale Studi Gentiliani, San Ginesio, Macerata (Italy). Former, Professor of Modern Political Thought at the Uni- versity of Padova. 1 This is the revised version of an essay that was first presented in the form of a “working paper” at the Institute for International Law and Justice, New York University School of Law (International Law and Justice Working Papers 2005/15, History and Theory of International Law Series, available at: http://www.iilj.org/events/documents/Panizza.pdf ). Improvements and reappraisals of the original piece have grown out of the extraordinary efflorescence of studies and symposia that have marked the quatercentenary celebrations of the death of Alberico Gentili (San Ginesio 1552—London 1608), drawing inspiration from the new directions and engagements of the historiography of modern international theory, with a special focus on the visions of global order, or the so-called “cosmopolitan project”, in the epoch of the Founding Fathers. 212 diego panizza terms of the dichotomy between the “scholastic”/“theological” and the “humanist”/“oratorical” traditions. Second, it makes it clear that Gentili is to be seen as the central character of the narrative, if centrality is to be accorded to the thinker who is the most innovative. Gentili’s original- ity was characterised by the close conjunction between his jurisprudence of war and the “new political theory”, that is by the special prominence of a “political dimension” in his jurisprudence in sharp contrast with the scholastic tradition and also with the conservative approach that Grotius adopted. In fact, what may be called the “political jurisprudence” of Gen- tili marks the beginning of a distinctive paradigm in the area of the new science of the law of nations. In a broader perspective—in la longue durée—this new paradigm may be seen too, to have come to dominate modern theories about politics and international relations. The political component plays a special part in Gentili’s system in two senses. In general it provided the ideological thrust behind the whole work; and in particular the humanist keywords and values he embraced inform the overall structure of what he wrote and provided him (and will pro- vide his subsequent students) with solutions to a great variety of topical questions that he discussed. What is striking in his De iure belli is Gentili’s extraordinary ability to manage complexity and create a new and coherent system out of different intellectual traditions—basically the Roman law tradition, and the two contrasting traditions, “scholastic”/“theological” and “humanist”/“oratorical”. This can be seen whenever, for instance, he discusses pro and contra arguments relating to a general principle. Almost every time he did this, he deployed the three distinguishable registers of language that correspond to those three approaches. His method is often said to be essentially topical and dialectical, having its roots in the medieval style of disputation, and typical of the mos itali- cus in which he was trained as a civilian in Perugia. This method was (of course) typical also of the scholastic tradition, in which the rationality and truth of propositions was proved on the basis of authority and consent. But this picture of Gentili’s method is only partially correct: there is more to it, and this distinguishes him from the scholastics. It is correct only in the sense that in Gentili’s style of argument using historical examples and learned opinions rather than rules and classifications, does indeed dominate his discussions; but there is in addition an overriding systematic strand evident in how he argued. Authority and consent are never paramount with him: but the “systematic” strand is evident and paramount in the fact that auctoritates et exempla, rationes et exempla are always .

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