Political Thought in Medieval Times Essay

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Medieval Political Thought

How did Augustine of Hippo's and Thomas Aquinas' views of the role of human free will in the process of salvation shape their different views of political theory?

For Augustine, there could be two cities -- the City of Man, which would essentially be a society without grace or goodness -- and the City of God, which would be a society that conformed to the will of God, participated with grace, and worked to perfect itself in accordance with the Commandments of God. One would be an imperfect society (the former) and the other would be a perfect society. Essentially, the City of Man is a system in which all endeavors are geared towards earthly happiness whereas in the City of God, endeavors are geared towards a spiritual happiness with God, enjoyed fully in the next life if one is good and dies in the state of grace with God in his soul.[footnoteRef:1] [1: Augustine, City of God, transl. Marcus Dods (Hendrickston, 2009), 619.]

Aquinas never really commented on political thought explicitly, though he did identify Eternal Law (God's commandments, or God's will) as the fundamental basis of all human law or natural law. This was based on the concept of the necessity -- God's eternal law being necessary for salvation.[footnoteRef:2] Natural law, according to Aquinas could not be at odds with God's law since God created nature and the law that governs it. [2: Aquinas, Commentary on Nichomachean Ethics (Dumb Ox Books, 1993), 364.]

For both, free will was the directive that led people to do what was right or wrong. Augustine viewed sin as misplaced love -- for example, sins of lust or sins of stealing were rooted in a love of pleasure or in a love of goods. Augustine held that true love should be placed in God and in the goodness of God in order for humans to really be happy. Building on the idea of Aristotle that happiness is the ultimate end and purpose of man's life, Augustine pointed out that humans have a free will that can be used to choose to place their love in the things of God (goodness, truth, faith, hope, charity) or in the things of man (ambition, power, riches, wealth, pride).

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God gave people a free will to choose their own way. Freedom of will is one of the characteristics of love -- the ability to choose for oneself. Augustine believed love should be guided by reason rather than by emotions or the flesh or lust, etc. This was the same for Aquinas who also viewed reason as the guide of actions -- including the act of faith. For Aquinas, faith in God was based on the use of reason, as reason dictated that there was nothing unreasonable about God's revelations (even if revelation was beyond the ability of reason to fully reconcile it, so to speak). Aquinas viewed free will as free in the sense that one was free to choose to do good but not free to choose evil, as this was a sin and a negation of the good. Thus, free will for Aquinas existed but in terms of what one was obliged to do, what one had only the right to do, one's free will had to be exercised in accordance with the dictates of God, otherwise it was abusing its freedom and would, in the end, lose its connection to God and be cut off from Him forever.

Thus, for Augustine, salvation and the free use of the will was the foundation of faith, which should guide the political aims of society, as politics should just be an expression of the conformity of the will of the people with the will of God. This was essentially the view of Aquinas as well, though for him the explicit use of political theory was more or less absent from his thought because he placed theology as a science far above politics, which was more of a social expression of the science of theology in the social sphere. Once the theology was clear and the reasons for….....

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