Abstract

The commonality of goods occurs frequently in modern theoretical models: ‘communism’ characterizes the golden age of myth and utopia, the apostolic community of the early Christians, or the state of nature of the Natural Law tradition. The article follows some of the itineraries of this theme, which developed on the field of religious non-conformism and heresy but soon fed into the controversies on natural law. It will be shown how in the modern age the reference to an original condition (the state-of-nature, or Christian communitarianism) is often looked upon with suspicion, because it is considered indissolubly linked to the communism of goods: in the egalitarianism of the anti-trinitarian communities in Eastern Europe, in the fight for the extension of suffrage, or in the fight for religious freedom.