Elvio Ancona

According to the Thomistic reflection on contingent matters, a conclusion is probabilis when it is arrived to through “dialectical” arguments, in the Aristotelician sense. In particular, for Aquinas dialectics is a method for searching truth also in the specific realm of judicial context, which represents a particular case of probable knowledge. Dialectics, as attends non only to value the reliability of testimonies, but aims more in general to the verification of the facts at stake, ensures the highest probability of the solution to be reached. From the Thomistic perspective, then, one can claim that, if in a trial the acquired evidence is sufficient, the solution arrived to through the dialectical method is, among the many possible, the one which most probably “corresponds” to reality.

All’origine della sovranità is a critical reflection on the complex and articolated sequence of events which, in the first half of the fourteenth century, brought to the crisis of Dyonisian hierarchical system and to the modern conception of sovereignty. In fact, the principle superiorem non recognoscere appears for the first time in juridical experience during the dispute about the two powers, when opponents of papal claims perceived the need to create new models of order, by which to replace the hierocratic representation of the hierarchical system. After having considered the different conceptions of Dyonisian order in the late Middle Ages, the Author dwells on the two main contrasting paradigms: Marsilio’s organicism and Dante’s humanism. The first was coupled with clearly conventionalist theses, and led to the supremacy of the sovereignty principle and to a total submission of citizens to the public will; on the contrary, the second heightened persons’ capacity for self-regulation in accordance with a law that is given them with their being, and that directs them both to the beatitudo huius vite and, above all, to the beatitudo vite ecterne. Because of this contrast, through the philosophical arguments of the disputants, the problem of the relation between the two powers emerges in all its dramatic complexity. It wasn’t only a question to recognize preeminences or supremacies, autonomies or subjections, but to pronounce upon the conception itself of political community, of its ordering principle, and of its juridical shape. For this reason the alternative between Dante and Marsilio will mark out the whole subsequent juridical and political experience, up to our days.

The Thomistic doctrine of adequatio seems to endure as a current topic in contemporary debates on the accessibility of truth in trials, since it can account for the objectivity of our knowledge, while avoiding anti-correspondence objections. It can, thus, offer an important contribution to forensic epistemology, in particular in force of the fact that, in conjunction with Thomistic reflections on the certitudo probabilis of witnesses, it allows us to combine the claim that, in legal matters (like in all variable and contingent subjects), we can never reach absolute certainty, with the conviction that one can nonetheless know what, with more probability, really happened.

Il volume, inserito nella collana diretta da Franco Todescan “Lex naturalis. Testi scelti di filosofia del diritto medievale”, presenta una sezione antologica di testi marsiliani introdotta da uno studio di Elvio Ancona sulla letteratura critica che nell’ultimo cinquantennio si è occupata del pensiero del Patavino. Lo studio bibliografico, in particolare, nella rivisitazione delle più recenti interpretazioni del Defensor pacis, trova occasione per interrogarsi su alcuni problemi giusfilosofici fondamentali che in quell’opera furono sollevati e sulle soluzioni che vi furono prospettate. In questa prospettiva, dunque, viene esaminata innanzitutto la discussione relativa all’ispirazione di fondo della riflessione di Marsilio, riassumibile nella domanda se egli si debba ritenere “magis aristotelicus” o “magis christianus”, e a quale tipo di aristotelismo o di cristianesimo eventualmente si riferisca. Vengono successivamente considerate le principali teorie fiorite intorno alle grandi tematiche “istituzionali” del Defensor pacis, concernenti l’origine, l’organizzazione e la legislazione della civitas sive regnum, tematiche che sono state affrontate dagli studiosi ricorrendo a concezioni che andavano di volta in volta dal naturalismo al convenzionalismo, dal repubblicanesimo all’assolutismo, dalla teonomia al giuspositivismo. Ci si sofferma quindi sulla diuturna controversia che, con riguardo alla politica religiosa del legislator marsiliano, ha fatto parlare, con linguaggio spesso consapevolmente anacronistico, di “secolarismo” o addirittura “laicismo” e, alternativamente, di “cesaropapismo”. Si conclude infine con la disputa storiografica sulla collocazione del Mainardini tra medioevo e modernità, e con la valutazione delle indicazioni che, in termini di “ideologia marsiliana”, la complessa vicenda ermeneutica esaminata offre per una comprensione unitaria del significato della sua opera.