Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) enters this wiki through the Treatise on Law of his Summa Theologica, the systematic hinge of the natural-law tradition.

Place in This Wiki

Aquinas was a Dominican friar and the central philosopher-theologian of the High Middle Ages, who fused Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology. The wiki uses one slice of his vast output: the natural-law sections of the Summa (I-II, QQ. 90–108), where he defines law as “an ordinance of reason for the common good” and sorts law into eternal, natural, human, and divine — holding that a human law contrary to natural law “is no longer a law but a perversion of law.”

He synthesizes Aristotle and the Ciceronian/Roman natural-law vocabulary and passes a rationalized natural law down to Grotius, the Late Scholastics, and Locke. Aquinas is the medieval pillar of the lineage, not a libertarian — his comfort with coercive human law and his “common good” orientation distinguish him from the rights-first moderns.

See Also

• Treatise on Law - the work present in this wiki
• Natural Law and Natural Order - the tradition Aquinas is the medieval pillar of
• Aristotle - the philosophical source Aquinas fuses with Christian theology
• Hugo Grotius - the jurist who secularizes the natural law Aquinas systematized
• John Locke - the modern heir who turns the tradition toward individual rights
• Natural Law - The wiki’s natural-law hub: the classical lineage of reason-knowable justice above positive law, from Aristotle and Cicero through Aquinas, Grotius, Locke

Sources

• Aquinas, Treatise on Law (Full Text) - the basis for this profile