The idea of universal community in Francisco Suárez

Abstract

We study how Suárez deepened a tradition decisive to strengthen the idea of universal community of supra-state nature, based on moral rules superior to the sover-eignty of the states, on the dignity of the human person, on the unit of the Human genre, on the universal common good and natural equality of the sovereigns of the world, both from the point of view of the domain of jurisdiction and of the property, supported by democratic conceptions about the origin of civil power. A concept of a community not only international but universal was thus affirmed, while the legitimacy of indigenous sovereignties in the New World was undermined, because civil power did not lie in faith or charity, but in natural reason and in sociability of men.