From ‘Lex Iniusta’ to ‘Unmündigkeit’: The School of Salamanca, Kant’s Practical Philosophy, and the Political Production of Monetary Tutelage

Abstract

This article argues that state-issued fiat money constitutes a form of Unmündigkeit (minority, immaturity) in Kant’s precise technical sense, and that this thesis has a direct antecedent in the School of Salamanca. We show that the Salamantine doctrine of monetary debasement as larceny and the right of resistance grounded in lex iniusta non est lex anticipate, in natural-law vocabulary, the same problem Kant reformulates in terms of practical reason. We further argue, drawing on Kant’s distinction between Unmündigkeit (1784) and Selbständigkeit (MS, AA 6:314), and on the German Kantian tradition (Höffe, Kersting, Siep, Henrich, Adorno), that the monetary monopoly violates categorical requirements of the Rechtslehre and destroys the epistemic infrastructure of rational self-governance. Three necessary conditions of monetary legitimacy are derived.