Politics Aquinas Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Politics doubting Thomas - Essay ExampleHowever, despite influences on Aquinas from the political modality of that time, we can perhaps find out the essence of his view on the mentioned problem that still would be relevant for our todays situation.Thomas Aquinas lived at a pivotal period for the Western philosophy when the feed of the Aristotelianism combined with scholasticism to reignite debates about the correlation between reason and faith. Aquinas became in full acquainted with this school of philosophy after he joined the Dominican Order and for several years studied with Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), a scholastic philosopher who worked on restating of the Aristotelian heritage. This acquaintance of Aquinas is considered to be the most solid influence on his world view, which turned him into an erudite scholar devoted to the Aristotelian method (McInerny, 1992, p. 16). In general, Scholastics of that time promoted empiricism and voiced support for policies and doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. They stood in opposition to Christian religious mysticism as well as to concepts of dualism of mind and of the evil nature of the world promoted earlier by Plato and St. Augustine (McGrade, 2003, pp. 33-34).What interests us in relation to the problem that we befool raised is Aquinas theory of natural law. To better understand this theory, it essential be pointed out that Aquinas views philosophy as a general term which relates to a aline of sciences. To diverse philosophical fields Aquinas ascribes the following due order for their study logic, mathematics, natural philosophy, honourable philosophy, and metaphysics, which is the apex of philosophical study. Aquinas theory of natural law concerns moral philosophy, for which the notion of the gentlemans gentleman good is central. Aquinas sees a difference between acts of a man and human acts, as the former acts can be also seen in non-human agents, while human acts stem from knowledge and will and alwa ys aim at a known good. But Aquinas points out that as a definite good is not the same as the goodness itself, then what holds together all the human actions is what he terms as the overarching goodness which is the ultimate end. Therefore, any human action is directed towards the ultimate end (Lisska, 1998, pp. 132-133).Now that we have uncovered the basic ground of the morality for Aquinas, we can better understand his views towards what he called the natural law. In fact, what forms the essence of the natural law moral theory is the view that morality stems from the nature of the world and of the human beings. For Aquinas, main morality-generating principle of human nature is its rationality, for instance manifested in human pursuit of a certain good, which underlies any moral law. Therefore, as humans are born rational, it is morally right to behave in correspondence with our rational nature. In this way Aquinas connects moral laws with the human nature and this connection form s the alkali of the natural law, that