Aquinas on Tyranny, Resistance, and the End of Politics (Perspectives on Political Science) (original) (raw)
Related papers
(2018) Reconsidering Tyranny and Tyrannicide in Aquinas's De Regno
Perspectives on Political Science, 2018
This study challenges a prevalent view that Aquinas's political thought develops over time on the question of legitimate resistance to tyranny. Many scholars argue that Aquinas gradually restricts the scope of legitimate political resistance and morally permissible tyrannicide. On this view, Aquinas defends tyrannicide in his early Commentary on the Sentences, adds strong qualifications in the Summa Theologiae, and finally repudiates tyrannicide in De Regno. This study finds the evidence for such a development lacking, and seeks to rehabilitate a long and diverse Thomistic tradition of legitimate resistance including tyrannicide. Indeed, a close reading of De Regno shows that Aquinas upholds a doctrine of political resistance and defends the legitimacy of tyrannicide under certain circumstances. Moreover, Aquinas's doctrine of political resistance is wide-open and underdeveloped. Later attempts to clarify and qualify Aquinas's doctrine of political resistance, therefore, are appropriate and even necessary.
THE SERVIENT CHARACTER OF POLITICAL POWER ACCORDING TO ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
Studia Gilsoniana, 2014
● Source: Pawel Tarasiewicz, “The Servient Character of Political Power According to St. Thomas Aquinas,” Studia Gilsoniana 3 (2014): 399-413 [ISSN 2300-0066] ● Summary: The author attempts to justify the thesis of the servient character of political power. By his analyses, he arrives at two conclusions. First, the ultimate goal of service fulfilled by political power should be identical with the natural goal of every human being, meaning a life of virtue. Hence, service to the cause of the citizens’ virtue requires that the fundamental duties of power include the protection of public peace, the promotion of actions towards the common good, and striving for a common abundance of worldly possessions. Second, to elect those in political power it is necessary to make sure that aspirants to such are characterized by the appropriate level of virtuous development. Each candidate should be first and foremost a person possessing a high moral quality (virtus boni viri), where prudence and magnanimity appear to be virtues especially fitting power (virtutes boni principis). ● Keywords: Political Philosophy; Political Parties; Government; Leadership; Virtue Ethics; Politics; Elections; Common Good; Human nature; Civic Virtue; Virtue; Morality; Prudence; Political Power; Body politics; Magnanimity; Public Peace and Unity; National government; Life of virtue.
Political Philosophy and Human Nature in Thomas Aquinas
Studia Gilsoniana 9:3, 2020
Taking into account and responding to two sets of objections to Thomas Aquinas’ credentials as political philosopher, the essay examines his political philosophy, its presupposed understanding of human nature, and its portrayal in his philosophy of law. Analysing the defining features of law in Aquinas places before the reader features of human nature, namely, rationality, relationality and religiosity. These traits enable one to find responses to what Charles Taylor has identified as “three malaises” of contemporary society and culture, namely, individualism, instrumental reason, and the political consequences of both.
Expanded Notes on Aquinas & Politics
These teaching notes consist of a much-expanded summary and analysis of Thomas Aquinas' comments on justice, law, and politics. They aim to facilitate a discussion of how the various pieces of the Thomist theory of politics fit together. The occasion for preparing this package of notes was a directed reading course on medieval political theory. The rationale for the course is that we should attempt to grasp the foundations of political theory in the Middle Ages if we want to properly understand the reconfiguration of political theory in the early modern period.
Aquinas in the History of Poltical Ideas: Limits of Human Laws
2014
Thomas Aquinas' political studies begin and end in places that are different from those we moderns are used to. First, the program of “realistic” politics is so ingrained in us that we think the idea that “moral philosophy” should serve as the starting point for political inquiry is generally dismissed as naive. Second, because modern politics entails the separation of "religion" and "state", the study of politics is a discipline conducted without reference to theology. This view of ours was completely foreign to Aquinas. Aquinas is usually presented as a kind of “Christian disciple” of Aristotle: the concepts he uses, the questions he debates, the solutions he suggests, etc. are in constant reference to – and in dialogue with – Aristotle. To claim this does not mean, of course, that the relationship between Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas is one of pure continuity: it is consensual – and even almost a truism – that such a relationship involves important discontinuities, which are reflected not only in the different political proposals to which they lead, but also in the “resistance” that Aristotle’s philosophy had to overcome in medieval universities, given the evident differences between “The” Pagan Philosopher and Christianity. In addition to the problem of reconciling Greek “ethical” and “political” ideas with biblical ideas, Aquinas' inquiries are marked by another order of tension: the tension between “reason” and “faith”. Such tension arises, above all, from the “canonical” interpretation of Aristotle that came from medieval philosophers, mainly Muslims and Jews, who maintained the incompatibility between the truths of reason and faith: either the world was eternal, or it had its beginning in Creation ex nihilo; either the highest virtue was magnanimity, or it was humility. Aristotle's “immovable mover” is not the providential Christian God who sees into men's hearts. It was necessary to choose between the humble blind obedience of Faith to what Reason cannot prove (and sometimes cannot even reveal), and the arguments of philosophy and science that rule out all non-rational truths. This was the prevailing feeling. Faced with this tension, the solution of many medieval disciples of Aristotle was to defend that there were “two truths”, one spiritual and mystical, and the other rational, which corresponded to two irreconcilable attitudes. But Aristotle himself was only indirectly known in the West until Aquinas decided to commission William of Moerbeke to translate the text into Latin from the best Greek versions preserved in the Muslim world. The essential problem with which Aquinas struggled was to understand whether – and to what extent – the teachings of Aristotelian philosophy were really incompatible with faith and should purely and simply be rejected as heretical, as most of the professors in Paris, who were disciples of Augustine, maintained; but also whether the elucidation of his own faith could benefit from the language and arguments of “The Philosopher”, which is what Aristotle was referred to as. The favorable response to Aristotle – the “optimism” of Thomas Aquinas regarding trust in reason – which animates his philosophical and theological inquiry is reflected in his views on politics and ethics. Instead of there being incompatibility, reason is for him a kind of “ladder” that approaches the truths revealed by God and allows us to verify the truth of the teachings of faith. So what distinguishes Aquinas's and Aristotle's investigations is something deeper than the clash of different theories. Indeed, in Aristotle the problem of the articulation between “ethics” and “politics” does not arise, since both are part of the same inquiry. For Aristotle, the full realization of the human being takes place in the polis (and what is good, just, etc. is not, at all, separable from the political sphere), while for Aquinas there is an essential difference (but not separation or incompatibility) between moral life and specifically political phenomena, which is rooted in the biblical injunction to "give to God what is God's and to Caesar what is Caesar's". So that the good of the human being and its fulfillment are no longer inseparably linked to the “political community”, in the classic sense of the term, but point towards transcendence and find in God their true source (in life ordered according to God). Such a distinction does not mean that there is no relationship between ethical and political life and “religious” life; it means that, contrary to what we think today, politics does not have complete autonomy and cannot fail to be thought of with reference to morality and theology (or at least rational theology), which are rightly called to play a central role. The paradoxical result of this view is the relative freedom of rational inquiry from theology, and of political government from faith and morality, which will henceforth define the west, and which is due mainly to the works of Thomas Aquinas. This is in great contrast to the profound distrust in reason that continued for centuries to mark eastern cultures.
Aquinas and the Democratic Virtues: An Introduction
Aquinas and the Democratic Virtues: An Introduction
Can the theology of Thomas Aquinas serve as a resource for reflection on democratic civic virtue? That is the central question taken up by the essays in this focus, by John Bowlin, Adam Eitel, Mark Jordan, and Michael Lamb. The four authors agree on one thing: Aquinas himself was no fan of democracy. They disagree, though, over whether Aquinas can offer resources for theorizing democratic virtues. Bowlin, Eitel, and Lamb believe he can, and propose Thomistic accounts of tolerance, civic friendship, and democratic hope, respectively. Jordan, in contrast, issues a cautionary note against such enterprises. This divergence is due in part to different judgments about what it would mean to claim certain resources as "Thomistic." In part, too, it flows from a disagreement about whether Aquinas himself countenances genuine virtues among non-Christian citizens, and about whether Christians and non-Christians can be said to share even proximate ends. The conversation is an important one, since accounts of the democratic virtues constructed using Thomistic resources have the potential to move discussions of democratic and theological virtues beyond common impasses.
International Law and Religion: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. History and Theory of International Law Series, Oxford University Press, 43-63, 2017
In the process of secularization of legal institutions, the thirteenth century - with all its political conflicts between emperors and popes - is relevant to understand the evolution of those institutions in modernity. Contextualized in that period, this chapter shows the importance of Aquinas's line of thought about the common good, law, and right in this process. In general, the context of Aquinas’s era and his personal circumstances were characterized by tensions between two perilous alternatives, the imperial and the papal power. Because of this, Aquinas was cautious to express his opinion in specific political issues of the time. This chapter argues that, in spite of Aquinas's caution in putting forward his political ideas, the essence of his political thought and his opposition to theocratic theory of government could be inferred also from his notions of natural law and ius gentium, in which he addressed the basic issues of property rights and slavery. Contrary to the tendency in academia which adscribes Aquinas's political thought to the theocratic theory, the present work argues that Aquinas was not a defender of this theory, but really a defender of secular power. Furthermore, in Aquinas's view, there was no need to invoke revealed truth to support political decisions and enactments, but only natural reason. Every law must conform to natural reason and natural law, and in order to be legitimate must aim for the common good. From this standpoint, Aquinas dealt with topics such as dominium, private property, commerce and slavery. The chapter concludes that with his notions of natural law and ius gentium, Aquinas defended the legitimacy of secular power and contributed to the secularization in its meaning as declericalization, by depriving temporal, political power of the clerical character it had in late thirteen century Europe. Aquinas also provided the grounds for the development of the doctrines about religious freedom, human natural sociability, and property rights that were used afterwards to discuss the rights over the new world. Keywords: Aquinas, political thought, common good, theocratic theory, secularization, natural law, ius gentium, property rights, slavery.
Aquinas's worldview and his applicability in the political writings of the XIV century
Revista Coletânea, 2024
In this paper we shall begin by analyzing Thomas Aquinas' worldview, which was based in an architecture of the universe in which God ruled supreme over it and in which, everything had been neatly established by his might. Then, we shall see how this conception was used by different political authors of the XIV century to defend different ideals of goodgovernment and of the relationship between the church and royal power. Hence, this paper aims at showing how they used his concepts of God as a governor of the world as well as his idea of an eternal law in different fashion, to defend either the papalist view or the anti-papalist one. In order to do it we shall be looking at the works of John of Paris On Royal and Papal Power and also, of Alvarez Pelayo, The State and the Weeping of the Church. In addition, we shall see how both of them used the idea of efficient cause presented, by Thomas Aquinas, as one of the main causes to prove the existence of God, to defend their position. Thus, it will be shown how the legacy of the heavenly doctor could be used in different ways by XIV century thinkers and will be drawn attention to both the richness and diversity of the world of political thought in the later Middle Ages.