Subsidiarity, federalism and the best constitution: Thomas Aquinas on city, province and empire
Law and Philosophy 26 (2):161-228 (2007)
| Abstract | This article closely examines the way in which Thomas Aquinas understood the relationship between the various forms of human community. The article focuses on Aquinas's theory of law and politics and, in particular, on his use of political categories, such as city, province and empire, together with the associated concepts of kingdom and nation, as well as various social groupings, such as household, clan and village, alongside of the distinctly ecclesiastical categories of parish, diocese and universal church. The analysis of these categories is used in the article to help explain Aquinas's role in the development of theories about subsidiarity, federalism and mixed constitutionalism. In the first place, it is argued that a close inquiry into Aquinas's discussion of the many and various forms of human community sheds light on the origins and development of the idea of subsidiarity within Catholic social teaching. Second, while Aquinas certainly did not advance a theory of federalism as that idea is presently understood, it is argued that recovering what Aquinas had to say about the categories of human community helps us to understand the origin and later development of federal ideas. Finally, it is argued that far from endorsing a system of absolute monarchy as is sometimes alleged, when understood in this way, Aquinas supported a particular kind of mixed constitution in which monarchy is tempered by a variety of constitutional constraints founded upon a conception of the body politic as itself constructed out of a plurality of smaller, intermediate corporations and communities of a political, ecclesiastical and social character. Keywords: Thomas Aquinas, political theory, subsidiarity, federalism, mixed constitution, absolute monarchy, civitas, provincia, imperium, regnum, gens, natural law . | |||||||||
| Keywords | Aquinas natural law subsidiarity federalism political theory social theory Catholic | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,631 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesJohn P. O.’Callaghan (2002). Aquinas, Cognitive Theory, and Analogy. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 76 (3):451-482.
Anthony Kenny (1969). Aquinas. Garden City, N.Y.,Anchor Books.
Anthony Kenny (1980). Aquinas. Hill and Wang.
Charles P. Nemeth (2008). Aquinas on Crime. St. Augustine's Press.
Philip A. Pucillo (2005). Toward A Subsidiarity-Based Judicial Federalism. Journal of Catholic Social Thought 2 (2):463-493.
John F. Stinneford (2005). Subsidiarity, Federalism, and Federal Prosecution of Street Crime. Journal of Catholic Social Thought 2 (2):495-534.
Paul J. Weithman (1993). Natural Law, Property, and Redistribution. Journal of Religious Ethics 21 (1):165 - 180.
Anthony J. Lisska (1996). Aquinas's Theory of Natural Law: An Analytic Reconstrution. Oxford University Press.
N. Maccormick (1997). Democracy, Subsidiarity, and Citizenship in the ‘European Commonwealth’. Law and Philosophy 16 (4):331-356.
Craig A. Boyd (2005). Participation Metaphysics in Aquinas's Theory of Natural Law. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 79 (3):431-445.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads69 ( #12,557 of 548,969 )Recent downloads (6 months)4 ( #19,222 of 548,969 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
