Political Ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Political Ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas A state according to St. Thomas is a part of the universal empire of which God is the maker and ruler. Its laws are, or can be made to be, particular determinations of this empire's eternal code; and the authority which enforces these laws is a power whose origin is also in Gk)d. Its goal and justification is to offer to man satisfactory material conditions of life as a basis for a moral and intellectual education which, in turn, must be such as to lend itself to the spiritual edification of the Christian man. For "God ... instructs us by means of His law and assists us by His grace." St. Thomas follows the Aristotelian doctrine that makes of man a "political animal," but he modifies it in accordance with the exigencies of his Christian philosophy. The fact that man operates, not by instinct, but by reason makes social organization indispensable. This interdependence of reason and sociability is explained by St. Thomas as follows: by endowing man with reason and at the same time depriving him of instinct and of an available ready-made supply of the necessities of life, God decreed that man should be a political animal. For to the beasts nature furnishes food, body covering, weapons of defense and offense (claws, fangs, horns, etc.), means for survival through flight (rapid wings and quick feet), etc. But all this, and much more, man must produce for himself under the direction of reason. What lower animals perform spontaneously and instinctively (i.e., by the exercise of the "estimative" faculty) man achieves as a result of rational processes. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.