“Hispanic scholastic philosophy” in this chapter designates a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century stream of philosophy which flowed out of medieval universities, increased to a torrent on the Iberian peninsula, then poured into other regions of Europe, America, Africa, and Asia. Arising in the wake of Spanish and Portuguese explorations and conquests, which at the end of the fifteenth and through the sixteenth century brought radically new, and usually bloody, encounters between European and non-European peoples, it was at its core concerned with such encounters. Other background themes were furnished by the Counter-Reformation, especially the reforms of the Council of Trent (1545-63) and its aftermath; the late Renaissance debates among philosophers, humanists and skeptics; and the revival of Thomistic texts and thought. Two subjects stand out as particularly important and influential: (1) moral and juridical philosophy centering on “the law of nations” (the jus gentium). and (2) theoretical philosophy, which included Aristotelian physics but culminated in metaphysics.

For present purposes the birth year of Hispanic philosophy was 1526, when Francisco de Vitoria, OP (1492-1546), was elected to the Cátedra de Prima in theology at Salamanca and began lectures on the “Second Part of the Second Part” (IIa-IIae) of the Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas. This introduced the Summa as the principal textbook in theology and also inaugurated a Thomistic revival in theology and in philosophy at Salamanca, then elsewhere. Choosing a terminal date for Hispanic philosophy here is more arbitrary, but a plausible one is 1718, when Miguel Viñas, SJ (1642-1718) died. It may immediately be noted that while Vitoria taught in Spain and belonged to the older religious order of the Dominicans, Viñas was a Jesuit who taught at Santiago in Chile.