Risks on Trade: The Activity of the Merchant in Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on the Sentences

Abstract

Thomas Aquinas's short text on the activity of merchants in his early work the Commentary on the Sentences is a milestone in the understanding of trade and in the treatment of a deficit of information about the trade's finality and the intention of the merchant. Three levels of risk can thus be distinguished, relating to the licitness of the trade, the conditions of the trading activity, and the remuneration of merchants; and these in turn encounter three types of risk: analytical risks, commercial risks and strategic risks. The treatment of trade activity in the Commentary on the Sentences thus offers a new understanding of later works such as De regno and the Summa theologiae.