A filosofia da economia e o monopólio na segunda escolástica

Abstract

This study explores the need to understand economics and its problems from a moral perspective, so as to be able to properly assess economic developments and promote human development. Our purpose is to demonstrate, through the various observations of the scholastics of the sixteenth century: Luis de Molina, Juan de Mariana and Leonardo Lessio, the impossibility of the universalization of monopoly definition and at the same time maintain its concept under the light of reason. We demonstrate the influence and the importance of economic observations of the Greek philosophers: Hesiod, Xenophon and Aristotle, as well as the medieval philosophers: Augustine of Hippo, Peter John Olivi and Thomas Aquinas, in the contemporary understanding of the social and economic sciences. For the study of the Second Scholastic thinkers we used the works: De iure et iustitia, of Luis de Molina, De monetae mutatione of Juan de Mariana and De iure et iustitia, of Leonardo Lessio. In this regard we compared the monopoly concept as understood by these authors and by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Augustin Cournot, as well as the austrian economists: Carl Menger, Israel Kirzner and Friedrich Hayek. We conclude that the need to analyze the problems of economics from the human ends is imperative for a rational economics analysis, highlighting this position in the doctors of the Second Scholastic, which clearly demonstrate the need for morally judging all circumstances that include the monopolistic action before setting it as just or unjust. These observations demonstrate, principally, the need to understand that economic issues are inseparable from justice issues. Thus, if we are to pursue the social economic development, it is necessary to perceive reality through human ends, and then we can determine, as prudent men, which way we should go.