In co-operation with History and Philosophy, the project ‘Human Dignity / Human Rights in the Early Modern Period’ explores the precursors of these concepts in the history of ideas, especially in the context of the response within Spanish scholasticism to the colonial experience of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and examines their systematic contribution to human rights debates.
The School of Salamanca is distinguished by the fact that it was confronted with a universal global system of political domination. The Spanish-Habsburg monarchy reached the limits of its claim to sovereignty both at its periphery and at its centre. The relationship between national monarchies and the church was called into question and the rights of individuals within these communities and outside of them were likewise threatened. The theorists of Spanish second scholasticism grasped the close interconnections between these issues.
Across the religious and confessional divides similar patterns of argument can be found in the European debates within the estate assemblies, which appeal to the justificatory schema of the right of emergency and defence (natural law, Roman law, ancient custom), but also to conscience as a controversial political-theological concept. That religion cannot be imposed by force was a point of conflict in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and a relevant argument within all the European political systems, though also towards the colonial populations. It represents the ferment within which the modern concept of human rights developed.
Clémentine Deliss and Juliane Rebentisch discuss the role of art in politics and society. The third Frankfurter Stadtgespräch of the Cluster of Excellence and Frankfurter Kunstverein will take place on September 16. 
