Theology, political theory, and justification in the Jesuit missions to Brazil, 1549--1610.
Item
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Title
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Theology, political theory, and justification in the Jesuit missions to Brazil, 1549--1610.
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Identifier
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AAI9830701
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identifier
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9830701
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Creator
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Eisenberg, Jose Monroe.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Melvin Richter
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Date
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1998
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Political Science, General | History, Latin American | History, Church
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Abstract
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The principal aim of this study is to show the power of a new twist on an established method for interpreting political thought. The secondary aim is to establish a novel set of historical insights made possible by the methodological innovation. The method goes beyond historicism and the subject covers the first generation of Jesuit missionaries in Brazil (1549-1610). An interpretation of the practical political ideas of the missionaries attentive to their strategies of justification will reveal their thought to have been a root of influential political theories subsequently refined and systematized by the influential metropolitan Jesuit theorists in the universities of Portugal and Spain, most notably the elevation of consent to a constitutive factor in legitimacy and the rise of subjective rights as a property of individuals. Such concepts are often traced either to rarified philosophical currents alone or, no less abstractly, to some supposed correlation with social interests or political trends. The method employed in this study, in contrast, focuses on concrete practices in historically specified institutional settings.;Skinner and Pocock's contextualist method for the study of the languages of political theory is a valuable point of departure for a history of political theory. They nevertheless fall short of explaining the conceptual changes that transform the languages of political theory. Through an analysis of the institutional correspondence between the missionaries and their superiors in Europe over the first sixty years of the Brazilian missions, I show how conceptual changes systematized into doctrine by theorists already lived in prior justifications uttered by political actors.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
