Aquinas, Aristotle, and the Promise of the Common Good

by Mary M. Keys

• ISBN13: 9780521722384
• ISBN10: 0521722381
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-01-07
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Aquinas, Aristotle, and the Promise of the Common Good claims that contemporary theory and practice have much to gain from engaging Aquinas's normative concept of the common good and his way of reconciling religion, philosophy, and politics. Examining the relationship between personal and common goods, and the relation of virtue and law to both, Mary M. Keys shows why Aquinas should be read in addition to Aristotle on these perennial questions. She focuses on Aquinas's Commentaries as mediating statements between Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Politics and Aquinas's own Summa Theologiae, showing how this serves as the missing link for grasping Aquinas's understanding of Aristotle's thought. Keys argues provocatively that Aquinas's Christian faith opens up new panoramas and possibilities for philosophical inquiry and insights into ethics and politics. Her book shows how religious faith can assist sound philosophical inquiry into the foundation and proper purposes of society and politics.

Author Biography

Mary M. Keys is associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Virtue, Law, and the Problem of the Common Good
Why Aquinas? Reconsidering and Reconceiving the Common Good	p. 3
The Promise and Problem of the Common Good: Contemporary Experience and Classical Articulation	p. 5
Why Aquinas? Centrality of the Concept and Focus on Foundations	p. 15
An Overview of the Argument by Parts and Chapters	p. 21
Contemporary Responses to the Problem of the Common Good: Three Anglo-American Theories	p. 29
Liberal Deontologism: Contractarian Common Goods in Rawls's Theory of Justice	p. 32
Communitarianism or Civic Republicanism: Sandel against Commonsense "Otherness"	p. 41
A Third Way? Galston on the Common Goods of Liberal Pluralism	p. 48
Aquinas's Social and Civic Foundations
Unearthing and Appropriating Aristotle's Foundations: From Three Anglo-American Theorists Back to Thomas Aquinas	p. 59
Aristotelianism and Political-Philosophic Foundations, Old and New	p. 59
Aristotle's Three Political-Philosophic Foundations in Thomas Aquinas's Thought	p. 63
The First Foundation and Aquinas's Commentary: Human Nature as "Political and Social" in Politics I	p. 67
Reinforcing the Foundations: Aquinas on the Problem of Political Virtue and Regime-Centered Political Science	p. 87
The Second Foundation and Aquinas's Commentary: Human Beings and Citizens in Politics III	p. 89
Faults in the Foundations: The Uncommented Politics and the Problem of Regime Particularity	p. 99
Politics Pointing beyond the Polis and the Politeia: Aquinas's New Foundations	p. 102
Finishing the Foundations and Beginning to Build: Aquinas on Human Action and Excellence as Social, Civic, and Religious	p. 116
Community, Common Good, and Goodness of Will	p. 118
Natural Sociability and the Extension of the Human Act	p. 124
Cardinal Virtues as Social and Civic Virtues - with a Divine Exemplar	p. 130
Moral Virtues at the Nexus of Personal and Common Goods
Remodeling the Moral Edifice (I): Aquinas and Aristotelian Magnanimity	p. 143
Aristotle on Magnanimity as Virtue	p. 144
Aquinas's Commentary on the Magnanimity of the Nicomachean Ethics	p. 147
The Summa Theologiae on Magnanimity and Some "Virtues of Acknowledged Dependence"	p. 153
Remodeling the Moral Edifice (II): Aquinas and Aristotelian Legal Justice	p. 173
Aristotle on Legal Justice	p. 175
Aquinas's Commentary on Legal Justice in the Nicomachean Ethics	p. 179
Legal Justice and Natural Law in the Summa Theologiae	p. 185
Politics, Human Law, and Transpolitical Virtue
Aquinas's Two Pedagogies: Human Law and the Good of Moral Virtue	p. 203
Aquinas's Negative Narrative, or How Law Can Curb Moral Vice	p. 205
Beyond Reform School: Law's Positive Pedagogy According to Aquinas	p. 208
Universality and Particularity, Law and Liberty	p. 216
Thomistic Legal Pedagogy and Liberal-Democratic Polities	p. 223
Theological Virtue and Thomistic Political Theory	p. 226
The Problematic Political Promotion of Theological Virtue	p. 228
Infused Moral Virtue and Civic Legal Justice	p. 234
Thomistic and Aristotelian Moderation for the Common Good	p. 236
Works Cited	p. 239
Index	p. 249
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