De regno, ad regem Cypri (Latin: On kingship, to the king of Cyprus) is a political treatise by Dominican friar Thomas Aquinas written between 1265 and 1266. Dedicated to king Hugh II of Cyprus, the work was left unfinished due to the premature death of the ruler. [1]
Unlike other works from Aquinas, De regno defends a strong and authoritarian monarchical rule as necessary and does not favour the creation of a mixed regime. This particular position has been explained as a reaction to the state of social unrest and upheaval caused by a series of internal revolts that started in 1233, which caused Cyprus to fall into a state of political instability. [1] [2]
In previous writings, Aquinas proposed a mixed monarchical system in which the king would be aided by an aristocratic class elected by the common population. De regno, however, champions a rather absolutist posture and asks for a strengthening of royal power. [1]
The work was highly influenced by the political doctrines of Albertus Magnus. [3]
Aquinas limits the scope of the work to monarchical rule, trying to conciliate it with Sacred Scripture, classical philosophy, and a Christian view of society. [1] [2]
The author justifies rulership from a teleological point of view. Aquinas sees eternal happiness and salvation under the guidance of the Catholic Church as the ultimate goal of human life but recognizes the importance of meeting basic needs for the achievement of that objective. Considering humans as inherently political beings who gather in societies to pursue the common good of satisfying their temporal needs and carrying out a virtuous life, Aquinas concludes the need to have a head who orders society to that goal and does not allow deviations from it. [1] The State is therefore seen as a divine creation for the good of mankind. The legitimacy of political power, however, becomes essentially conditioned to its service to the common good and its obedience to natural law. [2] The existence of the State is not seen as a consequence of original sin but rather as a matter of natural order. [3]
Aquinas analyses different forms of government with the premise that rulership must be oriented to the common good of society and arrives at the conclusion that the rule of a single person is better for leading the community to its goal as it prevents the individual interest of the masses from degrading it and favouring their personal aspirations based on their lower passions. The main function of a ruler, therefore, would be to promote the common good understood as the meeting of human needs and the advancement of Christian virtue. Aquinas still recognises other forms of government as legitimate and potentially good, namely aristocracy and politeia , despite considering them less perfect than monarchy as their natural instability may hinder the adequate search for the common good. [1] [2]
Aquinas sees humans as beings naturally oriented to the highest good, who are however depraved by original sin that causes deviations from the natural order. A good government, therefore, would be able to direct society to the common good ignoring individual ambitions. The natural disagreements caused by the different passions of human nature must be reconciled by a rightful king who orders the country to virtue and prosperity searching for social peace. [1]
Consequently, a bad government would account for one that rules for its own good or for the good of a particular fraction of society. Thomistic common good is seen as universal to all citizens, regardless of the majority's opinion. Aquinas divides perverted governments into three kinds: [1]
Seeing tyranny as the worst possible form of government, Aquinas tries to propose ways of preventing it. Rejecting the possibility of a violent uprising against a tyrant unless absolutely necessary, the author defends the establishment of political mechanisms by which the people may use their "public authority" to limit the authority of or even depose a king who has not "fulfilled his duties". [1] The proposed limits, however, where never stated due to the unfinished character of the work. [2]
Aquinas advises against armed rebellion but states that citizens are not compelled to obey the laws of an illegitimate ruler that goes against the highest good. [2] His view has been described as favourable to the "right to resist". [3]
Divine right of kings, divine right, or God's mandation, is a political and religious doctrine of political legitimacy of a monarchy in Western Christianity up until the Enlightenment. It is also known as the divine-right theory of kingship.
A monarchy is a form of government in which a person, the monarch, reigns as head of state for life or until abdication. The extent of the authority of the monarch may vary from restricted and largely symbolic, to fully autocratic, and may have representational, executive, legislative, and judicial functions.
Natural law is a system of law based on a close observation of natural order and human nature, from which values, thought by natural law's proponents to be intrinsic to human nature, can be deduced and applied independently of positive law. According to the theory of law called jusnaturalism, all people have inherent rights, conferred not by act of legislation but by "God, nature, or reason". Natural law theory can also refer to "theories of ethics, theories of politics, theories of civil law, and theories of religious morality".
Political philosophy, or political theory, is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships between them. Its topics include politics, justice, liberty, property, rights, law, and authority: what they are, if they are needed, what makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect, what form it should take, what the law is, and what duties citizens owe to a legitimate government, if any, and when it may be legitimately overthrown, if ever.
A republic, based on the Latin phrase res publica, is a state in which political power rests with the public through their representatives—in contrast to a monarchy. Although a republic is most often a single sovereign state, subnational state entities that have governments that are republican in nature may be referred to as republics.
Aristocracy is a form of government that places power in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocrats.
A tyrant, in the modern English usage of the word, is an absolute ruler who is unrestrained by law, or one who has usurped a legitimate ruler's sovereignty. Often portrayed as cruel, tyrants may defend their positions by resorting to repressive means. The original Greek term meant an absolute sovereign who came to power without constitutional right, yet the word had a neutral connotation during the Archaic and early Classical periods. However, Greek philosopher Plato saw tyrannos as a negative form of government, and on account of the decisive influence of philosophy on politics, deemed tyranny the "fourth and worst disorder of a state."
Tyrants lack "the very faculty that is the instrument of judgment"—reason. The tyrannical man is enslaved because the best part of him (reason) is enslaved, and likewise, the tyrannical state is enslaved, because it too lacks reason and order.
The Hundred Schools of Thought were philosophies and schools that flourished during the late Spring and Autumn period and Warring States period. The term was not used to describe these different philosophies until Confucianism, Mohism, and Legalism were created. The era in which they flourished was one of turbulence in China, fraught with chaos and mass militarization, but where Chinese philosophy was developed and patronized by competing bureaucracies. This phenomenon has been called the Contention of a Hundred Schools of Thought.
In philosophy, economics, and political science, the common good is either what is shared and beneficial for all or most members of a given community, or alternatively, what is achieved by citizenship, collective action, and active participation in the realm of politics and public service. The concept of the common good differs significantly among philosophical doctrines. Early conceptions of the common good were set out by Ancient Greek philosophers, including Aristotle and Plato. One understanding of the common good rooted in Aristotle's philosophy remains in common usage today, referring to what one contemporary scholar calls the "good proper to, and attainable only by, the community, yet individually shared by its members."
The family as a model for the organization of the state is a theory of political philosophy. It explains the structure of certain kinds of state in terms of the structure of the family, or it attempts to justify certain types of state by appeal to the structure of the family. The first known writer to use it was Aristotle, who argued that the natural progression of human beings was from the family via small communities to the polis.
Politeia is an ancient Greek word used in Greek political thought, especially that of Plato and Aristotle. Derived from the word polis ("city-state"), it has a range of meanings from "the rights of citizens" to a "form of government".
Tyrannicide or tyrannomachia is the killing or assassination of a tyrant or unjust ruler, purportedly for the common good, and usually by one of the tyrant's subjects. Tyrannicide was legally permitted and encouraged in Classical Athens. Often, the term "tyrant" was a justification for political murders by rivals, but in some exceptional cases students of Platonic philosophy risked their lives against tyrants. The killing of Clearchus of Heraclea in 353 BC by a cohort led by his own court philosopher is considered a sincere tyrannicide. A person who carries out a tyrannicide is also called a "tyrannicide".
Classical republicanism, also known as civic republicanism or civic humanism, is a form of republicanism developed in the Renaissance inspired by the governmental forms and writings of classical antiquity, especially such classical writers as Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero. Classical republicanism is built around concepts such as liberty as non-domination, self-government, rule of law, property-based personality, anti-corruption, abolition of monarchy, civics, civil society, common good, civic virtue, popular sovereignty, patriotism and mixed government.
The Republic is a Socratic dialogue authored by Plato around 375 BC, concerning justice, the order and character of the just city-state, and the just man. It is Plato's best-known work, and one of the world's most influential works of philosophy and political theory, both intellectually and historically.
Mirrors for princes or mirrors of princes was a literary genre of didactic political writings throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It was part of the broader speculum or mirror literature genre.
In political philosophy, the right of revolution or right of rebellion is the right or duty of a people to "alter or abolish" a government that acts against their common interests or threatens the safety of the people without justifiable cause. Stated throughout history in one form or another, the belief in this right has been used to justify various revolutions, including the American Revolution, French Revolution, the Syrian Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the Iranian Revolution.
Thomas Aquinas was an Italian Dominican friar and priest, the foremost Scholastic thinker, as well as one of the most influential philosophers and theologians in the Western tradition. He was from the county of Aquino in the Kingdom of Sicily.
Romanticism originated in the second half of the 18th century at the same time as the French Revolution. Romanticism continued to grow in reaction to the effects of the social transformation caused by the Revolution. There are many signs of these effects of the French Revolution in various pieces of Romantic literature. By examining the influence of the French Revolution, one can determine that Romanticism arose as a reaction to the French Revolution. Instead of searching for rules governing nature and human beings, the romantics searched for a direct communication with nature and treated humans as unique individuals not subject to scientific rules.
De regimine Judaeorum, ad Ducissam Brabantiae, also known as the Epistula ad Ducissam Brabantiae, is an epistle written by Dominican friar and Catholic saint Thomas Aquinas to Adelaide of Burgundy, Duchess of Brabant.
