Abstracts to Chapters Already this brief overview indicates that the common assumptions underlying the early modern practice of arguing with presumptions left plenty of space for controversy. This is highly relevant for the various fields of discourse in which presumptions were applied—the theory of judgmental duties, the theory of economic justice, the theory of meaning and interpretation, the theory of excepted crimes, the theory of international relations, the theory of political decision making and the theory of moral modalities. It is with the role of presumptions in these fields of discourse that the chapters in this volume will be concerned. Chapter 1 examines an issue from the discussion concerning du- ties of noncomparative justice in the writings of the sixteenth- century Spanish moralists: the question of how we should interpret doubtful evidence concerning the moral qualities of others. Domingo de Soto (1494–1560) suggests that merely avoiding a false negative judgment about others in a situation of doubtful evidence may be unjust. This suggestion sets his view apart from his contemporary, Thomas de Vio Cajetan (ca. 1468–1534), and also from the recent treatment of doubt in Joel Feinberg’s work on non- comparative justice. According to Feinberg, the morality of extrajuridical judgmental justice is grounded in a particular kind of moral emotions, namely, truth-related emotions.54 In his view, what is morally objectionable about derogatory judgments is that they violate truth and, hence, trigger moral emotions caused by violations of truth. What motivates Soto’s suggestion is the insight that what judgmental justice demands is not primarily truthfulness but rather respect for others’ natural rights of sociality. Soto uses the idea of natural needs and natural rights based on natural needs in order to identify a group of situations in which true derogatory judgments are unjust and false derogatory judgments are just: Forming and communicating true derogatory judgments are unjust when they are not done for the sake of the common good; and forming and communicating false derogatory judgments are not unjust when the error has been unavoidable on the basis of the available evidence. Soto develops an account of the role of natural rights in such cases: a false but just judgment is one that respects the natural rights of others; and a true but unjust judgment is one that violates the natural rights of others. Moreover, the natural rights that Soto has in mind are the right to live a life in society (a right that is natural because humans are by their nature social beings) and the right to live a life of virtue (a right that is natural because humans are by their rational nature capable of being virtuous). This is why he maintains that there is a moral obligation to hold positive opinions about others unless and until contrary evidence becomes available. Interestingly, Soto thinks of the default structure of such opinions in term of the notion of presumption prominent in legal methodology. However, unlike his teacher Francisco de Vitoria he does not understand the relevant kind of presumption as analogous to the presumption of innocence — which derives its force from law and is non-revisable — but rather as analogous to person-related presumptions that are sensitive to evidence and therefore can be revised. Chapter 2 explores the presumption in favor of the justice of decisions of the sovereign and its application to the question of the justice of price regulation. In particular, it will be argued that look- ing into this concrete field of application can clarify the circumstances under which forming such a presumption can be rational. Conversely, analyzing circumstances under which the presumption in favor of the justice of the prince is an expression of practical rationality explain why acts of legislation that are fraught with a high degree of uncertainty concerning the practical outcomes can indicate why price law can be legally binding—not only as a matter of obedience toward the superior but also as a matter of conscience. One of the conditions that have to be met in order to form this presumption in a rational way, it was generally held, is that the prince ex- presses a cause that fulfills the demands of justice. As it turns out, the question of whether acts of price regulation can match this criterion was controversially debated among the sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Spanish moralists, who were the leading eco- nomic thinkers of their time. Some of them, most prominently Luis de Molina (1535–1600), adhered to the view that, under all circumstances, the just price is defined by the price range that can be obtained under fair market conditions—i.e., under conditions that are free from deception, fraud, and menace. Even in situations of scarcity, he held, the prince can define legal prices only within the range of the fair market price, since any price outside this range would cause an injustice to the owners of the good concerned. However, a diverging line of thought can be found in Luis Mexía, who published a monograph on the topic in 1569, and Melchor de Soria, who took up the topic in 1627. These thinkers developed theories of price regulation in order to analyze the demands of justice in situations where markets cease to function—be it through natural conditions, wars or artificially induced shortages in supply. In order to do this, they used a version of the labor-and-cost analysis of value found in the Tübingen-based jurist Conrad Summenhart (1455–1502). The just cause that has to be expressed in price laws, in their view, de- pends on this alternative source of value and leads to demands of commutative and distributive justice that diverge from the demands of justice connected with the fair market conception of value. Also, Mexía and Soria offer detailed considerations concerning the circumstances under which a presumption in favor of the justice of price laws can be formed rationally and thereby offer some fascinating insights into the reasons why such rationally formed presumptions could render price law morally binding in spite of the uncertainty of their outcomes. Chapter 3 deals with a special issue in the sixteenth-century de- bate about the role of common usage in the constitution and change of the meaning of theoretical terms—a debate that has close analogies in twentieth century ordinary language philosophy. In general terms, this issue has been discussed by Renaissance philosophers such as Lorenzo Valla (1407–1457) and Bartolomeo Viotti (d. 1568), but it also played an important role in Renaissance theories of juridical interpretation. An aspect of the analysis of common usage in Renaissance theories of juridical interpretation that has not yet found much attention concerns the role of presumption. Early mod- ern critics of the idea that the meaning of legal terms could be constituted or changed through common usage have pointed out that everyday expressions often suffer from ambiguities that make a precise determination of meaning impossible. Also, they were very much aware of the problem that such expressions could be just expressions of commonly shared prejudices and errors. For both rea- sons, it seems to be questionable why common usage should be helpful in securing the validity of legal acts and in defining the content of theoretical concepts. I would like to argue that Renaissance theories of juridical interpretation contain some insight that may offer viable answers to these objections. This is so because Renaisance jurists such as Nicolaus Everardus (1462–1532), Simone de Praetis and Aimone de Cravetta (1504–1569) did not brush aside the objections but rather took them to indicate that matters of common usage involve a degree of uncertainty. Hence, they were looking for a theoretical tool that would allow them to deal rationally with situations of uncertainty, and the methodological notion of presumption is one of the concepts that figured most prominently in Renaissance approaches to the problem of uncertainty. The notion of presumption offers a fascinating strategy for giving an account of common usage in the constitution of meaning and the practice of interpretation that regard ordinary ways of speaking neither as an ultimate, unquestionable point of reference nor as something that is invariably ambiguous and flawed. Chapter 4 takes up another question that is as pressing today as it was in the early modern world: How should a legal system deal with crimes that are perceived as threatening the very existence of a state and the security of its citizens? In early modern legal and political thought, these crimes were discussed under the heading of “excepted crimes”—crimes that do not fall under the usual rules of le- gal procedure specified in written law. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, not only crimes such as high treason, assassination, or the violation of princely sovereignty rights (lèse-majesté) were subsumed under this category, but also poisoning and witchcraft. Obviously, such crimes pose problems concerning suitable investigative methods that lead to useful juridical evidence. Typically, acts classified as “excepted crimes” are planned and carried out in secret, so that many of the usual procedures of collecting and evaluating evidence are not available. Moreover, such crimes pose problems concerning the question of how to evaluate evidence once it has been obtained. One such problem has to do with the fact that the effects of such crimes are regarded as more dangerous for the state and its citizens than the effects of other crimes. Investigating such crimes, hence, might be directed more towards protecting the state and its citizens from the effects of such crimes and less towards finding just punishment for persons found guilty of these crimes. Investigating such crimes, hence, might invite modifications both in the methods of obtaining evidence and in the standards of evaluating it. Both early modern supporters of weakening standards of evidence in cases of treason and witchcraft and their early modern critics used the notion of presumption in discussing the viability of the notion of “excepted crimes.” One intuition was that, in order to protect the state, torture is admissible in alleged cases of excepted crimes on the basis of mere presumption, even in the absence of indications against the accused. The other intuition was that presumptions are meant to protect the rights of the accused and therefore exclude torture in the absence of indications against the accused. In this chapter, I examine how these matters were discussed in a controversy between three early seventeenth-century Jesuits: Martín Antonio Delrío (1551–1608), Adam Tanner (1572–1632), and Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld (1591–1635). While Delrío developed natural-law arguments in favor of using presumptions for the purpose of protect- ing the state, Tanner and Spee developed natural-law arguments in favor of using presumptions for the purpose of protecting the accused. Chapter 5 explores another question prominent in early modern political thought that has not lost its relevance for the contemporary world. In early modern theories of international relations, the concept of usucaption—the acquisition of ownership through longstanding possession—was a widely accepted device designed to settle territorial disputes on the basis of long-standing control over a territory. The concept of usucaption originates in Roman civil law. According to Roman civil law, mere protracted possession is insufficient for usucaption. At least two further conditions have to be met: (1) The new possessor has to be in good faith when acquiring possession—i.e., the new possessor has to believe that he or she is legally entitled to acquire and to continue holding possession of the object in question. (2) The rightfulness of possession must not have been challenged in court in the meantime. The concept of usucaption was introduced into international law by Alberico Gentili (1552–1608), who argues that if the function of usucaption in civil law is to avoid endless legal disputes, usucaption could also be a suitable tool for avoiding endless political disputes over territorial matters. Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) argues that usucaption in inter- national relations can be legitimately based on what he calls the “presumption of abandonment”—i.e., the idea that if the political leadership of a country did not protest against the loss of a territory for some time, then the leadership can be presumed to have formed the will to give up claims to this territory. Few early modern thinkers have disputed the applicability of usucaption to international relations. However, one who did was the jurist and philosopher Johannes von Felden (d. 1668). In this chapter, I will explore his criticism of the extension of usucaption to international relations and his alternative proposals for how to establish a society of states through peaceful resolution of territorial conflicts. As far as usucaption goes, Felden’s views diverge substantially from Grotius’ views on the ownership of nations. While Grotius believes that usucaption is a legitimate part of the law of nations, Felden denies this very idea. He contests the claim that silence alone—which can be caused by oppression or fear—suffices for forming the presumption of abandonment. Rather, he develops a conception of a society of states that is regulated by a system of courts for international law and he there- by re-introduces the concept of evidence-based presumption into the juridical context from which it originated. Chapter 6 pursues the issue of usucaption in international relations further. One prominent early modern controversy in which usucaption was invoked concerned the countship of Burgundy, and it is this controversy that led to an illuminating correspondence be- tween Leibniz and his protégé Johannes Werlhof (1660-1711). In a long essay, Werlhof defended Grotius’s stance on usucaption in international relations against criticism by the French historian Pierre du Puy (1582-1651). Du Puy defended the ownership rights of the King of France over the Countship of Burgundy against allegations of usucaption on the side of the German Empire. In response to a letter from Werlhof, Leibniz sent to Werlhof a shorter essay on the role of usucaption and prescription in international relations that he had written sometime between 1687 and 1696, and the ensuing correspondence discussed many points touched upon in the two essays. Some of the most interesting points in this exchange concern the role of presumption in applying the concepts of usucaption and prescription to international relations, and it is with them that this chapter will be concerned. As it will turn out, in Leibniz’s view it is exactly the problem of the loss of reliable evidence that could be used to support historical claims to land ownership that makes the presumption of dereliction a justifiable instrument for the purpose of avoiding conflicts over historical claims. Chapter 7 investigates the role of the concept of cognitive simplicity in Leibniz’s account of presumptions. Leibniz’s treatments of the connection between simplicity and presumption may contribute something significant to contemporary accounts of what makes presumptions plausible. This is so because, while contemporary accounts focus on the pragmatic side of cognitive simplicity, Leibniz sought to ground cognitive simplicity in what comes about more easily in reality. To explicate the notion of easiness, Leibniz invokes the ontology of “requisites”—that is, factors without which some- thing could not exist or not exist in the way it does. Actions belong to the category of things that have requisites, and Leibniz’s idea seems to be that the plausibility of the presumption concerning one course of action is higher than the plausibility of the presumption concerning an alternative course of action if the former course of action has a smaller number of requisites, and in this sense comes about more “easily” than the other. This idea has important applications in Leibniz’s political and ethical thought. The role of requisites in the metaphysics of action belongs to the relevant context of Leibniz’s remarks concerning presumption in political decision making. Here, his precept is that one should form presumptions in favor of the course of action that has fewer requisites than alternative courses of action. Also, the ontology of requisites forms the ontological background of Leibniz’s puzzling claim that, as long as we do not know whether a given action is just, it should be presumed to be just. I would like to suggest that the view that there is a presumption in favor of an action’s being just is closely connected with his con- ception of easiness. The upshot of these considerations will be that it may be a good idea to de-dichotomize the distinction between cog- nitive simplicity and ontological simplicity.