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God, the Devil, and Cupid: A Tripartite Formula for a Sinful Death

God, the Devil, and Cupid: A Tripartite Formula for a Sinful Death

Leaños, Jaime (University of Nevada – Reno)

eHumanista: Volume 9, (2007)

Abstract

Can there be evil without good? Do people have freedom of choice, or is what they do always outside their control? Is there such a thing as sin? If so, what is it? How does it arise? These questions, based on Thomas Aquinas’s De malo (ca. 1267), were, perhaps, on the mind of Fernando de Rojas as he composed his masterpiece, La Celestina. There is no doubt that the teachings of Aquinas were present in fifteenthcentury Spain, and that Rojas was well-acquainted with his religious philosophy as Aquinas’s teachings dominated the syllabus of the studia humanitatis at and around the time when Rojas was a student at the University of Salamanca. In this article, I will focus on Aquinas’s moral theories as they can be traced in La Celestina. I believe that they are paramount in establishing the meaning of ambiguity (or lack thereof) in Rojas’s work.

 

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