The investigations seek to analyse the interconnections between the debates over collective political rights and the contemporary theoretical debates over individual rights. The latter were a particular concern of second scholasticism in Catholic Spain as well as of Lutheran and Calvinist juridico-theological debates. Thus it remains to be clarified whether, beneath the confessional antagonisms which emerged during the sixteenth century, the contemporaries shared a common political language. The investigation of the changes which the political vocabulary underwent can enhance our understanding of the transformation of political norms.
At the methodological level, the analysis of the grammar of early modern political and political-theological languages is the main focus of the investigations; in this way both the plurality of normative orders and convergences among them can be analysed. Among the justification narratives are the modes of argumentation designed to legitimise political positions or the validity of values. The investigation of debates designed to legitimise political rule, drawing upon mirrors for princes and the protocols of the diets and regional parliaments, represents an appropriate research approach.
The contrast between particularity and universality, which found expression in the opposition between the universal claim to power of the monarchies and the regional identities of the estates, provided a starting point for formulating new justification narratives which appealed to traditional rights of participation.
This research project involves the combination of the two subprojects ‘Human Dignity / Human Rights in the Early Modern Period’ and ‘Law of the Estates and the Universal Claim to Power in the Early Modern Period’.
For further information see: www.normativeorders.net (German)
