Andre Alves

The present article analyses the contemporary discourse on war and peace in light of traditional just war theory and in the context of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. The first sections present and discuss the most relevant recent developments of the Magisterium on these themes. After that, the article presents a comparison of contemporary discourse with just war theory as it was outlined in the Salamanca School in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The main conclusions point towards an ongoing tension between a general and resolute condemnation of war and the recognition of the legitimacy of armed conflict in certain exceptional circumstances. The admission of these exceptions does not jeopardize the underlying general principles – it concentrates the ethical condemnation on the political actors responsible for generating the terrible circumstances in which war is to be considered legitimate, but nevertheless regrettable and always constituting a failure of humanity.

This paper draws from the work of sixteenth century theologian, philosopher, and ethicist Domingo de Soto and considers his virtue-based approach to the ethical evaluation of commerce within an Aristotelian–Thomistic framework for the articulation of business and the common good. Particular attention is given to the fundamental emphasis placed by Soto in distinguishing between commerce as an activity and the specific conduct of persons engaging in commercial activity. The distinction between the material and the formal parts of the common good is then employed to shed light on the way Soto articulates commercial practices, virtuous character, and the common good. It is concluded that Soto’s major contribution for business ethics is clarifying that the key element for the ethical evaluation of commerce is the embodiment of virtuous personal conduct in the exercise of commercial activity. In this framework, the fulfillment of commerce’s potential to contribute to the common good is thus fundamentally interconnected with putting virtues into practice

O paradigma neoclássico tornou-se dominante na ciência económica no período que se seguiu à Segunda Guerra Mundial, tendo como referência modelos de equilíbrio parcial e geral e caracterizando-se por um crescente recurso à formalização matemática. O predomínio da síntese neoclássica nas áreas do ensino e da investigação económica é de tal modo significativo que se verifica mesmo urna tendência para apenas atribuir valor científico às teorias elaboradas no âmbito do paradigma dominante. Segundo o artigo, esta é urna situação potencialmente perigosa na medida em que obscurece as limitações da ortodoxia neoclássica e limita substancialmente a reflexão dos economistas sobre os princípios metodológicos e os fundamentos filosóficos subjacentes às suas próprias análises. Daí a importância que, para o autor do artigo, tem a Escola Austríaca de Economia e o facto de ela, apesar de ter algumas origens comuns com o paradigma neoclássico, ter seguido um caminho divergente em relação a este. Como tal, o artigo concentra a sua atenção na contributo da Escola Austríaca e isso, sobretudo, em ordern a salientar as principais diferenças em relação à Escola Neoclássica. O resultado final, porém, é urna abordagem dos princtpios metodológicos e dos fundamentos filosóficos que caracterizam cada urna destas duas abordagens teóricas, sendo que o autor procura sobretudo enfatizar as suas respectivas implicações para a análise dinâmica dos processos de mercado. The neoclassical paradigm became dominant in the science of economics in the penod following the Second World War. As such, the paradigm features models of partial and general equilibnum as its main references and is charactenzed by an increasing degree of mathematical formalization. The prevalence of the neoclassical synthesis in the teaching of economics, as well as in research, became so strong that the dominant tendency became to attnbute scientific value only to theones elaborated within the dominant paradigm. This, of course, is a potentially hazardous situation since it obscures the limitations of the neoclassical orthodoxy and substantially restncts the reflection that economists should do over the methodological principles and philosophical foundations that underpin their own analyses. The Austnan School of Economics has some common origins with that paradigm but yet has followed a divergent path. Accordingly, the aim of the article is to analyse this specific path in order to shed anew some light on the main differences in terms of methodological principles and philosophical foundations between these two theoretical approaches, and in order to highlight their mutual implications when it comes to a dynamic analysis of market processes