Francisco de Vitoria’s Moral Cosmopolitanism and Contemporary Catholic Social Teaching

Abstract

Francisco de Vitoria offers a stimulating vision of moral cosmopolitanism that foreshadows the cosmopolitanism implicit in contemporary Catholic social teaching. After drawing a distinction between moral cosmopolitanism and political cosmopolitanism, this essay retrieves Vitoria’s cosmopolitan vision in his efforts to defend “the rights of the Indians” through concepts such as subjective rights, ius gentium , the right to travel, and the inherent human dignity of all people. Nonetheless, he opposes all claims of universal sovereignty. Vitoria thus appears as advocating moral but not political cosmopolitanism, perhaps because his political imagination is shaped by monarchies, with their totalitarian tendencies, rather than by modern democracies. The final part of the essay explores how the distinction between different kinds of cosmopolitanism illuminates the variety of positions on the subject to be found in contemporary Catholic social teaching.