Augustine and Aquinas Justifications of the Exercise of Social and Political Ruling - Coursework Example

263940Aquinas Political Writings and Augustine’s of God Introduction The study of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas as regards their political ideologies can be found within their respective works. St. Augustine was a man who meditated on the teachings of Christ and whose own political ideology held that government was but bookmarker for the greater governance of God (Dodds, D. (trans.), 1950, p. ix). Augustine was an observer of the fall of Rome in 410 A.D., and much of his political ideology as expressed in City of God, is a combination of Augustine’s meditative reflections on Christianity, and that which he observed in the rule over mankind by mankind (p. ix). St. Thomas Aquinas was born in the early 13th century, of an affluent family, with direct blood lines to the ruling royal families of the day (Dyson, R.W., 2002, p. xvii). He began his religious training as an oblate, at the Benedictine monastery in Monte Cassino (p. xvii). Later, in 1245, became a member of the Dominican order, and furthered his education at the University of Paris where the German theologian Albertus Magnus introduced him to the study of Aristotle. In 1248 he followed Albertus to Cologne (p. xvii). It was earlier, however, while at the monastery, that Thomas studied Aristotle (p. xvii). Two great men, philosophers, separated by hundreds of years, whose interpretations and writings on political theory continue to influence the thinking of great men, women, religious, and political leaders today. This brief essay is an examination and comparison of the two schools of thought as they pertain to the governance of society socially and politically. The paper will rely on the works of St. Augustine, using his City of God as translated by Marcus D. D. Dodds (1950), and St. Thomas Aquinas’s Political Writings translated by R.W. Dyson (2002). To read either work without the benefit of a modern translation would be, at best, a slow and difficult endeavor that could perhaps, for some, take a lifetime. Under the guidance of the translators, we can gain a sense of the political ideologies of both Augustine and Aquinas. Augustine and the City of God St. Augustine watched as the world around him spun out of control and into chaos, culminating with the fall of Rome, in 410 A.D (Dodds, p. ix). Rome’s fall brought crashing down the myths that Rome would last forever and rule the world (ix). It would have been a time when scholars, like Augustine, would be formulating thoughts and ideas, influenced by their philosophical teachings and interpretations, about world leadership and political and social manifestations of corruption and values. Augustine had watched, throughout most of his life, as Rome ruled the world and carried out a campaign of expansionism. It would be expected that, watching the fall of Rome, Augustine would have strong feelings about misguided political forces. It would also be expected that the Church would be the target of some backlash as having been complicit in the goals, and subsequent fall of Rome (p. x). The allegation was one that St. Augustine found without evidence, and empty of fact (p. x). So his writings would reflect this idea, and, it would be expected, that as a religious leader within the Church, that the writings inspired in defense of the Church would be critical of the political leaders whom would allow the Church to serve as what St. Augustine might have perceived as a scapegoat for the real ineptitude. While it was initially St. Augustine’s goal to disprove the contention that the Church was complicit, he instead changed his focus on dogma, and the value of it is that it is a lived dogma, an experience as it unfolded (p. x). The political writings of St. Augustine are, for that reason, a work that should be read and studied by students of theology, political science, and sociology St. Thomas Aquinas’s Political Writings St. Thomas Aquinas differs from Augustine, because Augustine was living the political upheaval of the day that involved, by allegation, and problem some complicity too, those events that brought down Rome. Also, by virtue of the location in the heart of Rome, it would seem to some, if not many, that the Church was more than complicit, but was even perhaps the perpetrator of the poor political decisions that led to the fall of the empire. Thomas Aquinas did not live in a political moment as did Augustine. Aquinas was a student of philosophy, whose focus was Aristotle (p. x). Therefore it is expected, and follows that Aquinas’s focus was more on the Church teachings sans the politics, because there is no politics taught in the New Testament, except to pay Caesar his due (p. x). “The great struggle between Augustinianism and Aristotelianism had come to a head, and it was St. Thomas who fought the decisive battle. These were the culminating years of his life and activity. He returned to Italy in 1272, a director of the Dominican Studium in Naples. He was not yet fifty when he died — on the 7th of March, 1274 — in the monastery of Fossanuova, while he was on his way to the Council of Lyons . . . We cannot expect a man of this kind to have much in common with the professional political theorist. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he kept aloof from the strife of a turbulent age. He was no counsellor of Princes or Popes like Giles of Rome, no passionate patriot and partisan like Dante (D’Entreves, A. P., 1948, vii).” The Two Schools of Thought Keeping in mind that Aquinas was separated from the government philosophically and socially, it is his writings specifically on kingship that addresses his political perspective (Dyson, p. 5). Aquinas’s believed stemmed from John 18:36, wherein Jesus identifies himself as a king, but not of the world in which he moved on earth (p. 36). “Chapter XIII: He proceeds to show what the duties of a king are; he shows also that, according to the way of nature, the king in his kingdom is like the soul in the body and God in the world Following on from what we have said, it is necessary now to consider what the duty of the king is and what sort of person the king should be. And because it is true that art imitates nature and that it is from natural things that we learn how to act according to reason, it would seem best to infer the duties of a king from the forms of government which occur in nature (Dyson, p. 36).” Augustine refers to kingship in terms of governance of Rome. Augustine talks about the enemies of Rome, but speaks of these things from the first-hand experience in terms of the human weaknesses and vices to which men in power succumb to that corrupt them. “For at what stage would that passion rest when once it has lodged in a proud spirit, until by a succession of advances it has reached even the throne? And to obtain such advances nothing avails but unscrupulous ambition. But unscrupulous ambition has nothing to work upon, save in a nation corrupted by avarice and luxury. Moreover, a people becomes avaricious and luxurious by prosperity; and it was this which that very prudent man Nasica was endeavouring to avoid when he opposed the destruction of the greatest, strongest, wealthiest city of Romes enemy. He thought that thus fear would act as a curb on lust, and that lust being curbed would not run riot in luxury, and that luxury being prevented avarice would be at an end; and that these vices being banished, virtue would flourish and increase, to the great profit of the state; and liberty, the fit companion of virtue, would abide unfettered. For similar reasons, and animated by the same considerate patriotism, that same chief pontiff of yours -- I still refer to him who was adjudged Romes best man without one dissentient voice -- threw cold water on the proposal of the senate to build a circle of seats round the theatre, and in a very weighty speech warned them against allowing the luxurious manners of Greece to sap the Roman manliness, and persuaded them not to yield to the enervating and emasculating influence of foreign licentiousness. So authoritative and forcible were his words, that the senate was moved to prohibit the use even of those benches which hitherto had been customarily brought to the theatre for the temporary use of the citizens. How eagerly would such a man as this have banished from Rome the scenic exhibitions themselves, had he dared to oppose the authority of those whom he supposed to be gods! For he did not know that they were malicious devils; or if he did, he supposed they should rather be propitiated than despised. For there had not yet been revealed to the Gentiles the heavenly doctrine which should purify their hearts by faith, and transform their natural disposition by humble godliness, and turn them from the service of proud devils to seek the things that are in heaven, or even above the heavens (Dods, p. 36).” Both Augustine and Aquinas equated the political shortcomings of rulers and kings to original sin (Dods, p. 457; Dyson, p. 124). Augustine contended that God foresaw all things, therefore foresaw man’s sin, originating in Adam (Dods, p. 457). Mankind, Augustine said, lived with God for his rule in a physical and in a spiritual way (p. 458). It was to sin that Augustine attributed the fall of Rome, contending that politically Rome had lost its spiritual connection or awareness of God, thus became physically susceptible as a result of the loss of their spiritual connection. This makes it easier, too, to understand how intertwined the perception was that Rome and the Church were inseparable, and it was to the Church’s defense that Augustine explained the corruption of Rome’s leaders. Augustine and Aquinas were actually of like minds on original sin, and how it impacted the rulers of the day. Aquinas said that all men, guilty and innocent, suffer death in nature, and that it is in the natural state that God gives man free will, and that if man elects can choose to punish sin at His own will (Dyson, p. 124; Dods, p. 457). While Augustine’s observations of the state are evident in his work, there is less such evidence of experience with the state in Aquinas’s writings. Augustine found that the people of a society (Roman) were bound together by their love of that society, and thusly bound to the governance of that society (Dods, p. 61). It would be the love of that society, and the following of the governance of that society that would, therefore, affect the individual’s decision to follow the ruler, regardless of the individual’s better discretion, or, ostensibly, free will. Augustine held that the republic could not be governed without injustice (p. 61). Therefore, Augustine was saying, that the republic was governed by the sin of the injustice. “For it could not be the peoples weal when a tyrant factiously lorded it over the state; neither would the people be any longer a people if it were unjust, since it would no longer answer the definition of a people -"an assemblage associated by a common acknowledgment of law, and by a community of interests (Dods, p. 62)." Aquinas held that to be human, was to follow the humanistic tendency to live within a society (Dyson, p. 9). Thusly, Aquinas suggested that the majority of the society would follow its leadership without question. The following would arise out of the need to be part of the society (Dyson, p. 9). “Now since it is fitting for man to live in a community because he would not be able to provide all the necessaries of life for himself were he to remain alone, it must be that a society of many men will be perfect to the extent that it is self-sufficient in the necessaries of life. The self-sufficient life is certainly present to some extent in the family of one household, with respect, thatis, to the natural activities of nourishment and the procreation of children and other things of this kind; and one locality may be sufficient in all those things belonging to a particular trade; and a city, which is a perfect [i.e. a complete] community, is sufficient in all the necessaries of life (Dyson, p. 9).” So what Augustine and Aquinas seemed to agree upon, was that man was a social being, and that as a social being man subordinated himself to the kingship of the society governance. There is the expectation on the part of society that empowers the king, and that is that the kingship, leadership, will govern in a way that is consistent with the authority of God over mankind, and that the kingship will be above the weaknesses of lust, greed, avarice, and vice and as to bring upon the entire society the wrath of God. As has already been shown here, the will of God is one that is imposed upon mankind in mankind’s natural and spiritual state. Therefore, the expectation of society is that the kingship will be one that does not bring the judgment of God upon it in a way that brings down the society. For Aquinas, who did not experience the fall of Rome, the fall of the state, and for whom, by way of that belief in God as the higher authority over the state, there remained a distinct separation between the authority of the kingship and that of God, with God being the judgment yet to come. For Augustine, who witnessed the fall of Rome, there was no separation between the spiritual and the natural, and Augustine had seen the will of God exerted in that it was God who brought down Rome. While there is no discussion beyond paying Caesar his due in the New Testament on political traditions and how mankind should conduct his self in those matters, then both Augustine and Aquinas maintain that it is the free will God granted man to follow the Christian teachings of Jesus in a move towards good, and away from evil of original sin. The difference – or the major difference – between Augustine and Aquinas rests with each philosopher’s experience. References Aquinas, T. (1948). Selected Political Writings (A. P. DEntrÈves, Ed.). Oxford, England: B. Blackwell. Retrieved December 23, 2008, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=99369745 Augustine, S. (1950). The City of God (Dods, M. D., Trans.). New York: Modern Library. Retrieved December 23, 2008, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=61633564 Dyson, R. W. (Ed.). (2002). Political Writings. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved December 23, 2008, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=105541539 Read More