Abstract:
My essay on the political ideas in Thomas Aquinas's DR is dealing with the main topics of political philosophy Aquinas has established according to Aristotle's Politics as well as to some Platonian doctrines, for example to the doctrine that plurality presupposes unity (Proklos: Elementatio theologica, 5 Prop.) or to the doctrine Aquinas quotes in DR I 3 and he contrasts it with his own opinions as being predicated on the Politics of Aristotle: 1. Bonum commune est melius quam bonum unius. 2. Human being is by nature an animal civile, nevertheless a state or city is due to a founder (Aristotle). 3. The polis or state are by their nature a plurality and diversity of human beings; a state becoming more and more unit is in the end no longer a state, polis, or city (Aristotle). 4. Therefore it is required that human beings have to be governed and directed to the bonum commune or multitudinis, as Thomas says, that is the task of the monarch, whereas the pope has to care for the final end of human life. 5. Aquina's doctrine of the duplex felicitas is leading him to a strict disjunction between the two visible and perceptible powers of the world: the monarchical and papal. 6. Insofar there is no subjugation of the monarch under the pope. On the contrary, the monarch has to do with temporal things: the bonum commune, the welfare, and peace of a community, the pope has to do with the final and eternal good consisting in the visio Dei. Both, the secular and the spiritual powers are required to attain happiness promised us in the end of our life. 7. Finally, all human activities concerning the political organizations of human life are in the competence of free human creative power.
