This book delves into the inadequately explored, liberative side of Humanism during the late Renaissance. While some long-sixteenth-century thinking anticipates twentieth-century Liberation Theology, a more appropriate description is simply “liberation thinking,” which embraces its diverse, timeless, and sometimes nontheological aspects.
Two moments frame the treatment of American colonialism’s physical and mental pathways and the liberative response to them, known as liberation thinking. These are St. Thomas More’s Utopia, published in 1516, and Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s thousand-page Nueva crónica y buen gobierno, completed one hundred years later. These works and others by Erasmus and Bartolomé de las Casas trace the development of the idea of human liberation in the face of degrading chattel and encomienda slavery as well as the peonage that gave rise to the hacienda system in the Americas. Catholic humanists such as More, Erasmus, Las Casas, and Guaman Poma developed arguments, theories, and even theology that attempted to deconstruct those subordinating structures.
- Front Cover
- Front matter
- Half-title
- Series information
- Title page
- Copyright information
- Dedication
- Epigraphy
- Table of contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Body
- INTRODUCTION
- The Colonial Force, Coloniality, and Liberation from Them
- Coloniality: Psychosis and Implicit Bias
- Genesis and Organization of this Book
- Chapter 1 EVERYDAY COLONIALITY AND EARLY SOCIAL SLAVERY THEORY
- Coloniality of Structure and Coloniality of Mind
- Nahua Slavery, Spanish Slavery, and Spanish Appropriation of Nahua Slavery
- The Encomienda and the Imposition of Debt Peonage
- Chattel Slavery’s Philosophical Underpinnings
- Columbus: One Small Step beyond Aristotle
- Chapter 2 THE ELUSIVE DIVISION-OF-POWER IDEAL
- Hernán Cortés: Using Spiritual Power to Temporal Advantage
- The Encomienda, the Church, and the Fusion of Temporal and Spiritual Power
- Royal Patronage and Fusion of Power
- On the Temporality of Ecclesiastical Authorities
- Chapter 3 DISMANTLING THE “NATURAL” THEORY OF SLAVERY
- Thomas More, Ethics, and the New World
- Las Casas, the Cry against Slavery, and the Birth of Indigenismo
- Erasmus’ Condemnation of Greed
- Beyond Aristotle: Renaissance Liberation Thinking, a New Awareness
- Chapter 4 LIBERATION THINKING: EUROPE
- Liberation Thinking as Decolonial Thought
- Combatting the Wickedness Within, and Without
- Thomas More, Sir, Saint, Liberation Thinker
- Gold and Free Will
- On Liberation from Private Property
- Discernment on the Material and the Development of the Conscience
- Erasmus of Rotterdam and the Life of the Spirit
- Division of Power: Popes, Priests, Princes, and Men
- Primitive Christianity and the War within the Mind
- Against Materialism, Advocating Nonviolence
- Chapter 5 LIBERATION THINKING: THE AMERICAS (ABYA YALA)
- Bartolomé de las Casas: Toward a Decolonial Theory of Liberation
- On Evangelization: Form, Content, and Language; Motolinía vs. Las Casas
- An Early Modern Liberation Thinker
- Theologizing Liberation Decolonially
- Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s Decolonial Reasoning
- An Andean, an Englishman, and a Spaniard, and the Question of Sources
- Catholicism Predating itself in Peru as Autochthonous Liberation Thinking
- Liberation Thinking: Jesus’s Poor and an Ethnic Theory of Sovereignty
- The Emergence of Liberation Thinking despite the Coloniality of Power
- Toward a Sui Generis Andean Priesthood
- Back matter
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Primary Sources
- Secondary Sources
- INDEX
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