Political Thought in Medieval Times

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). 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 how one should conduct oneself clearly defined, as they were in the Summa Theological, for instance, the politics would be easy. All one would have to do is align one's will with the truths outlined by the Church and all of society would be ordered naturally in its own way.[footnoteRef:3] [3: Aquinas, Notes]

2 Aristotle believed that an ethical society would produce ethical citizens. How did this idea shape medieval political philosophy? Your answer must include specific references to the ideas of philosophers from all three religious backgrounds.

Aristotle's sense that ethical society would produce ethical citizens shaped medieval political philosophy in the sense that for each of the three major religions this idea of a cause and effect relationship was evident in the origins of their religions. Goodness and natural law came from God, as much for the Jews as for the Muslims and Christians: God was the originator of ethics, the Most Ethical Being because He was the source of all that was good. He was Good Society in the Ideal sense. Thus, from God and the reflection of ethical society, ethical citizens would be produced, which is an idea that is inherent in all the three religions and which just so happens to also be evident in Aristotle's teaching. Aristotle's sense no doubt had some impact on the three religions' philosophers, as they all studied Aristotle to some degree and reflected on his understanding of human society and applied it to their own understanding of society in the light of their individual faiths.[footnoteRef:4] [4: Aquinas, Commentary on the Politics (Hackett, 2007), 28]

Thus, Augustine held that a City of God would be an ethical society that would produce ethical citizens because of the City's insistence upon the rights of God first and foremost (as opposed to the rights of man -- which is a modern era concept celebrated from the Enlightenment onwards to our own day). The medieval philosopher asserted the rights of God first -- and this was the basis of the ethical society, which in turn helped to cultivate the ethical citizen. Because the pagan Romans did not assert the rights of God first and foremost but elevated pleasure and status and pride and riches above the rights of God -- in other words asserted their own right to earthly happiness above God's right to enjoy eternal happiness with them in Paradis -- the Romans could not create a perfectly ethical society and, in turn, perfectly ethical citizens. They could foster some degree of ethical persons, but in the end the person would need to convert to the true religion of Christianity in order to really become part of an ethical society (Christendom) and help create ethical citizens.