John Mair on natural law and the conquest of the Americas

Marcos Paredes Sadler, currently a guest researcher at the mpilhlt, will present his doctoral project on John Mair (†1550) who was the first to argue that the newly ‘discovered’ indigenous peoples of the Americas were slaves by nature and thus the Spaniards had the right to conquer them. Mair was the most important theologian at the University of Paris in his time, and his influence was far reaching. – Marcos Paredes proposes to read his views on the conquest in light of his political philosophy, looking into a a potential inconsistency in Mair’s view on the nature of political power which could invalidate one of his main arguments in favor of the conquest of the Americas, namely the supreme power of the people’s consent in a society.