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Between Norm and Message: Justice in Tractatus VII of Ludwig Babenstuber OSB as a Model of Social Communication in the Eighteenth Century
Abstract
The article offers an interpretation of Tractatus VII by Ludwig Babenstuber OSB as a model of social communication in the eighteenth century, situated between moral normativity and its social communication. The point of departure is the scholastic concept of justice developed by Babenstuber within the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, encompassing legal, distributive, and commutative justice, while treating punishment as an act of legal and commutative justice rather than as a separate fourth species.
The article argues that this framework functions not merely as a normative doctrine but also as a structured mechanism for communicating values, sanctions, and obligations within early modern political and religious communities. The analysis is complemented by a comparative perspective involving selected modern theories of justice, particularly those of John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas, highlighting the enduring problem of legitimizing norms and their social reception. The conclusion suggests that Babenstuber’s Tractatus VII may be read as an early form of normative social communication, whose insights remain relevant for contemporary ethical and political theory.
Keywords:
justice, Ludwig Babenstuber, Tractatus VII, early modern scholasticism, natural law, common good, restitution, punishment, responsibility, norms, social communication, theories of justiceDetails
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.