Il Filosofo e il genocidio. Su Giuseppe Tosi, Aristóteles e o Novo Mundo

Giuseppe Tosi’s Aristóteles e o Novo Mundo. A controvérsia sobre a conquista da América introduces and comments the Spanish debate about the Conquest of America on the threshold of modernity. The main works of the leading figures – Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, Francisco de Vitoria and Bartolomé de Las Casas – are analyzed on the background of relevant interpretations, whose unilateralism is criticized. The Aristotelian philosophy – especially the theory of natural slavery – remained a basic reference for theologians and humanists, but for decades the debate was open and radical. This is related by Tosi to the tension between the role of Spanish and Portuguese kingdoms as the vanguard of original accumulation and the “clash of identities” lived by missionaries who had to balance loyalty to the crown and to evangelism.