Bound by the Good: The Common Good as Ground of Political Obligation in Aquinas’s Political Theory
Political authority is not eliminable, even if in a globalizing world order the particulars of its exercise might be undergoing a transformation. What matters to political philosophy is whether or not its existence and exercise can be justified. In this paper I begin by contrasting two paradigmatic...
| Published in: | Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
[2018]
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| In: |
Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Political authority is not eliminable, even if in a globalizing world order the particulars of its exercise might be undergoing a transformation. What matters to political philosophy is whether or not its existence and exercise can be justified. In this paper I begin by contrasting two paradigmatic approaches to justifications of political authority and political obligation: political naturalism and political voluntarism. Having set the stage for the debate, I connect Aquinas’s account of political authority with the former - though one will not find a full-fledged version of that account in this paper (it appears elsewhere). More importantly, I connect Aquinas’s naturalist defense of political obligation to a non-instrumental account of the common good, though the bulk of the paper deals with what I argue are failed attempts to offer non-naturalist accounts of the common good as alternative natural law defenses of political authority. |
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| ISSN: | 2153-7925 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: American Catholic Philosophical Association, Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.5840/acpaproc201892110 |