Is medieval economic thought 'ecological'? The case of Thomas Aquinas

Résumé 0

In a famous 1967 article, Lynn White predicted the coming climate crisis and attributed responsibility for it to the medieval conception of man and nature. Yet Thomas Aquinas’s economic thought tends rather to refute this hypothesis, and could even be described, in contemporary terms, as ‘ecological’, at least in two respects. On the one hand, in considering the two sources of supply—namely local resources, and imports by foreign merchants—the risks of shortages caused by wars and transport difficulties, and the social and cultural disadvantages engendered by the arrival of merchants, led Aquinas to favour local supply. On the other hand, although Aquinas used the lexicon of production, this was in accordance with classical Latin and the biblical tradition, whereby it was reserved for the earth which produces through its fertility. Human activity is therefore not conceived as production, but as adaptation, reception, transformation, transport and exchange to satisfy needs.