Product Description

St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics contains translations of carefully chosen and central selections from The Summa Against the Gentiles, On Kingship or The Governance of Rulers, and The Summa of Theology. The selections not only include St. Thomas Aquinas’s views on government, law, war, property, and sexual ethics, but also provide the theological, epistemological, and psychological background for his political and ethical thought, including the Five Proofs on the existence of God and Aquinas’s theories of knowledge, the soul, the purpose of man, and the order of the universe. Throughout the book, footnotes explain technical terms and historical, biblical, and classical references.

"Backgrounds and Sources" follows the text, with selections from the writings of Aristotle, St. Augustine, and Dionysius the Areopagite.

"Interpretations" traces Aquinas’s influence on medieval thought, on Roman Catholicism during the Renaissance, on early modern political thought (Richard Hooker and Francisco Suarez), on nineteenth-and twentieth-century papal social thought, and on contemporary Christian Democratic political parties in Europe and Latin America.

The volume concludes with "Contemporary Problems in Thomistic Ethics", which contains eight analyses of the influence of Aquinas's thought on modern debates on war, contraception, and abortion.

A Selected Bibliography is included. .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #188345 in Books
• Published on: 1987-11-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 248 pages

Language Notes
Text: English, Latin (translation)

About the Author
Paul E. Sigmund is Professor of Politics at Princeton University. He is the author of numerous books, including The Ideologies of the Developing Nations, Natural Law in Political Thought, The Overthrow of Allende and the Politics of Chile, and Liberation Theology at the Crossroads. He is the translator and editor of the Norton Critical Edition of St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics.

Customer Reviews

A truly excellent anthology of Thomistic thought
This is a truly excellent selection of Thomistic writing, both by the Angelic Doctor and his critics and modern-day followers. It is not only comprehensive on the subject of Aquinas's politics and ethics but it is a good introduction to Thomism and natural law theory in general. Mortimer Adler's spanking of Bill Moyers on the subject of objective ethics is worth the price of the book just by itself.

The Thinner Aquinas
This book is "The Thinner Aquinas," a targeted text specifically focusing on Aquinas's political and ethical writings.

Incluced are obvious selections from Summa Contra Gentiles and Summa Theologica (Five Ways of God's Existence and Essay on Law), but also included are excerpts from "De Regimine Principum."

There are hidden treasures in the back, excerpts from backgound sources and essays that influenced and were influenced by Thomisitic thought.

This book is geared towards a poltical scientist and poltical philosopher. For the theologian or the philosopher, however, I would reccomed Penguin Classics "Selected Writings."

PS--Nice picture on the cover!