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Sepúlveda, Las Casas, and the Other: Exploring the Tension between Moral Universalism and Alterity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 September 2010

Daniel R. Brunstetter
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Abstract

Modern politics is at times a balancing act between universal claims about the human (equal rights, dignity, and respect) and political actions which may seem to violate these claims (torture, just wars, repudiation of certain cultural practices, tacit discrimination). An exploration of some of the philosophical roots of the modern understanding of the person, when it was the subject of debate, provides a perspective at the origin of Modernity from which to evaluate the tenuous relationship between moral universalism and alterity at the heart of this tension. The debates at Valladolid in 1550–51 between Las Casas and Sepúlveda, arguing their conceptions of the human, can shed light on how and why arguments for inequality creep back into the modern discourse on alterity. The lessons from Valladolid, therefore, might help to limit or clarify recourse to such arguments.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 72 , Issue 3 , Summer 2010 , pp. 409 - 435
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2010

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References

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18 See also Leopold's questions about whether war was the beast means to assimilate the Indians (25–27, 76), his belief that the Spanish ought to “give restitution for all the goods taken from the Indians” in these “unjust” and “cruel” wars (28), and his recognition that the Indians have dominium (43, 68–69).

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23 Sepúlveda is not the first to apply the natural slave theory. On his predecessors, such as John Mair, Gil Gregorio, Bernardo de Mesa, and Palacios Rubios, see Pagden, Fall of Natural Man, 37–56.

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