Philosophy 131

Activity 6
Module 4 – St. Thomas Aquinas
Instruction: analyze the following questions and provide a responsive answer.
1.) Cite and explain five (5) points of distinction between the Augustinian and Thomistic
Political philosophy.
Augustinian Political Philosophy

 Two Cities. On one hand there is the Earthly City, defined by earthly desires and
actions. The other is the City of God, defined by spiritual pursuits. Humans could
only be citizens of one city, and their natural default was to live in the earthly
city as a result of the Fall of Man.
 Political states are imperfect, but they do serve a higher purpose. By creating
laws and maintaining order, they serve a divine mandate to protect humanity
from chaos. Rulers, therefore, have a natural right to create laws and punish law-
breakers, and citizens have a natural obligation to obey their rulers absolutely.
 Augustinian notion of justice includes what by his day was a well-established
definition of justice of “giving every man his due.” However, Augustine grounds
his application of the definition in distinctively Christian philosophical
commitments: “justice,” says Augustine, “is love serving God only, and therefore
ruling well all else.” Accordingly, justice becomes the crucial distinction between
ideal political states (none of which actually exist on earth) and non-ideal
political states the status of every political state on earth.
 ostensible reason for the state’s divinely appointed existence is to assist and
bless humankind, there is no just state, says Augustine, because men reject the
thing that best could bring justice to an imperfect world, namely, the teachings
of Christ. Augustine does not suggest that current rejection of Christ’s teachings
means that all hope for future amendment and reformation is lost. However,
Augustine’s whole tenor is that there is no reason to expect that the political
jurisdictions of this world ever will be anything different than what they now are,
if the past is any predictor of the future.
 Wars serve the function of putting mankind on notice, as it were, of the value of
consistently righteous living. Although one might feel to call upon Augustine to
defend the notion that God can, with propriety, use so terrible a vehicle as war
to chasten the wicked, two points must be kept in mind: The first point is that,
for Augustine, all of God’s acts are just, by definition, even if the application of
that definition to specific cases of the human experience eludes human
reasoning.
Thomistic Political Philosophy

 Aquinas’ celebrated doctrine of natural law no doubt plays a central role in his
moral and political teaching. According to Aquinas, everything in the terrestrial
world is created by God and endowed with a certain nature that defines what
each sort of being is in its essence. A thing’s nature is detectable not only in its
external appearance, but also and more importantly through the natural
inclinations which guide it to behave in conformity with the particular nature it
has. As Aquinas argues, God’s authorship and active role in prescribing and
sustaining the various natures included in creation may rightfully be called a law.
After defining law as “an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by
someone who has care of the community, and promulgated.
 Aquinas mentions that one of the natural goods to which human beings are
inclined is “to live in society.” This remark presents the ideal point of departure
for one of the most important teachings of Thomistic political philosophy,
namely, the political nature of man. Aquinas believes that political society)
emerges from the needs and aspirations of human nature itself. Thus
understood, it is not an invention of human ingenuity (as in the political
teachings of modern social contract theorists) nor an artificial construction
designed to make up for human nature’s shortcomings. It is, rather, a prompting
of nature itself that sets humans apart from all other natural creatures. To be
sure, political society is not simply given by nature. It is rather something to
which human beings naturally aspire and which is necessary for the full
perfection of their existence. The capacity for political society is not natural to
man, therefore, in the same way as the five senses are natural. The naturalness
of politics is more appropriately compared to the naturalness of moral virtue.
 Human Legislation. The fact that regimes may vary according to time and place is
a perfect example of the fact that not every moral or political directive is
specified by nature. In fact, Aquinas is eager to point out that the natural law,
while providing the fundamental basis for human action and politics, fails to
provide specific requirements for all the details of human social existence. For
example, whereas the natural law does provide certain general standards of
economic justice (which we shall consider later on), it does not give a preferred
form of currency. There is no natural law that requires how often public roads
should be repaired, or whether military service will be mandatory or voluntary.
Whereas Aquinas argues that the natural law requires criminals to be punished
for injustices such as murder, theft, and assault, there is no natural specification
as to precisely what kinds of punishments ought to be imposed for these crimes.
Even though, as Aquinas recognizes, these details do not pertain directly to
whether a regime is good or bad, human social life would be impossible to
maintain without attention to such detail. Such is the role, according to Aquinas.
  The Requirements of Justice. As we have seen, Aquinas’ argument for the
necessity of human law includes the observation that some human beings
require an additional coercive incentive to respect and promote the common
good. By means of the law, those who show hostility to their fellow citizens are
restrained from their evildoing through “force and fear,” and may even
eventually come “to do willingly what hitherto they did from fear, and become
virtuous.” During this discussion, Aquinas mentions two specific dimensions of
the common good that are of particular concern to human legislation. The first
of these is “peace.” By this term, Aquinas means something considerably more
mundane than any sort of “inner peace” or spiritual tranquility that one finds as
a result of moral or intellectual perfection. Instead, he seems to have in mind the
requirements for maintaining a social order in which citizens are free from the
aggression of wrongdoers and other preventable threats to safety or livelihood.
In addition to preserving social order at its most basic level, however, Aquinas
also makes clear in the above passage that human law should strive to instill
“virtue,” and specifically that kind of virtue which has to do with the common
good of society.
 The Limitations of Politics. As we have seen, much of Aquinas’ political teaching
is adapted from the Aristotelian political science which he studied in great detail
and which he largely embraced. Perhaps the most central Aristotelian political
doctrine in Aquinas’ view is the inherent goodness and naturalness of political
society. It is also necessary to understand, however, that in addition to being
good and natural political society is also limited in several important respects,
not all of which would have been pointed out by Aristotle but are unique to
Aquinas’ teaching. As we have already seen, Aquinas believes that the human
laws governing political societies must be somewhat limited in scope. For
example, the fact that something like the practice of usury is unjust does not
necessarily mean that political society can or should forbid it: “Human laws leave
certain things unpunished, on account of the condition of those who are
imperfect, and who would be deprived of many advantages, if all sins were
strictly forbidden and punishments appointed for them.
2.) St. Thomas Aquinas imbibed the Aristotelian concept of the origin of the
state. In what particular aspect it differed from Aristotle?
Aquinas supports the existence of a state, including a state monopoly on military
and police violence. As with most statist thinkers, Aquinas believes that the state
creates the “good” of social order. By setting clear rules, rights and duties, it creates a
context for people to flourish and develop, free from the risks of violence and instability.
Hence, everyone’s general welfare depends on state power. In order to attempt to
justify something as extreme and violent as the state, statists must maintain that these
goods are both indispensable and overwhelmingly important. Thomas Aquinas follows
 Aristotle, when he asserts the state as the highest achievement of man. The ultimate
end of man, the perfecta beatitude, is the common good which is higher in value than
that of the individual and that of the family. Thomas Aquinas followed Aristotle in
deriving the idea of the state from the very nature of man. This means that the
justification of the state must be sought in the very nature of man and this is precisely
the leading idea Thomas Aquinas derives from Aristotle. The state is not a work of art,
but a historical product. It is the highest expression of human fellowship. All that
pertains to that fellowship is natural to man. Man is unthinkable without the state,
because it is only in the state and through the state that he can achieve perfection.
3.) What is the relation of the Human Positive Law to that of the Natural
Moral Law?
The theory of natural law believes that our civil laws should be based on
morality, ethics, and what is inherently correct. This is in contrast to what is called
"positive law" or "man-made law," which is defined by statute and common law and
may or may not reflect the natural law. The subject-matter of the relationship between
positive law and natural law is important for us to understand the nature, basis, source
of legitimacy, and function of positive laws. Natural laws" are inherent in us as human
beings. "Positive laws" are created by us in the context of society. The concepts of
natural and positive law are mutually compatible.
4.) With Aquinas’ assertion of the dominance of Faith over Reason, will it
cast doubt on the veracity of truth acquired through human insight?