Summary of St.Thomas Aquinas' Treastie on Law
Thomas Aquinas, Treatise on Law
Summary of Work:
Aquinas's political and legal theory is important for three reasons. First, it reasserts the value of politics by drawing on Aristotle to argue that politics and political life are morally positive activities that are in accordance with the intention of God for man. Second, it combines traditional hierarchical and feudal views of the structure of society and politics with emerging community-oriented and incipiently egalitarian views of the proper ordering of society. Third, it develops an integrated and logically coherent theory of natural law that continues to be an important source of legal, political, and moral norms.
Main Point of Section:
In the Treatise on Law, Aquinas concerns himself with the origins of law. He wants to know the source of the obligation that law imposes. The questions are these: “By what warrant does the human legislator bind the consciences of people? Doesn’t this power belong to God alone? If people possess it, what are the limits within which they may exercise it?”
Key Ideas:
1. Source of the law is God. The root of obligation is in the divine conception of the order proper to the universe. Human Law, to be just and morally obligating, must therefore be rooted in Divine Law. People cannot originate the law themselves. Aquinas rejects Divine Right theory because it contributes a divine quality to political authority. No authority, not even the sovereign, can impose an obligation on the citizen where it is not already latent in the nature of things.
2. Essence of Law: An ordinance of reason for the common good made by one who has care for the community and is promulgated. (90.4)
3. Kinds of Law: A hierarchical typology of laws. * But the eternal, natural, and human laws are all one rule progressively specified.
a) Eternal: The rational governance of everything on the part of God as ruler of the universe (91.1). Divine Providence.
b) Natural: The participation in
Summary of Work:
Aquinas's political and legal theory is important for three reasons. First, it reasserts the value of politics by drawing on Aristotle to argue that politics and political life are morally positive activities that are in accordance with the intention of God for man. Second, it combines traditional hierarchical and feudal views of the structure of society and politics with emerging community-oriented and incipiently egalitarian views of the proper ordering of society. Third, it develops an integrated and logically coherent theory of natural law that continues to be an important source of legal, political, and moral norms.
Main Point of Section:
In the Treatise on Law, Aquinas concerns himself with the origins of law. He wants to know the source of the obligation that law imposes. The questions are these: “By what warrant does the human legislator bind the consciences of people? Doesn’t this power belong to God alone? If people possess it, what are the limits within which they may exercise it?”
Key Ideas:
1. Source of the law is God. The root of obligation is in the divine conception of the order proper to the universe. Human Law, to be just and morally obligating, must therefore be rooted in Divine Law. People cannot originate the law themselves. Aquinas rejects Divine Right theory because it contributes a divine quality to political authority. No authority, not even the sovereign, can impose an obligation on the citizen where it is not already latent in the nature of things.
2. Essence of Law: An ordinance of reason for the common good made by one who has care for the community and is promulgated. (90.4)
3. Kinds of Law: A hierarchical typology of laws. * But the eternal, natural, and human laws are all one rule progressively specified.
a) Eternal: The rational governance of everything on the part of God as ruler of the universe (91.1). Divine Providence.
b) Natural: The participation in