St. Thomas’ Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics
The Proemium

Listers, Aristotle’s Politics is arguably the most important political text in proper Western political thought. St. Thomas’ introduction and commentary is invaluable, because the Angelic Doctor was able to articulate an autonomous Nature existing within a Divinely ordered cosmos. Nature is key to understanding Catholic political thought. Man is a political animal, and the society he inhabits is as natural as the forest. Check out our thread on politics for more political philosophy. Let us begin.

Two Sections:
St. Thomas’ Introduction to Politics (1-4)
St. Thomas’ Four Main Points Gathered from Aristotle’s Politics (5-8)

1. Art Imitates Nature

“Now the principle of those things that come about through art is the human intellect, and the human intellect derives according to a certain resemblance from the divine intellect, which is the principle of natural things. Hence the operations of art must imitate the operations of nature and the things that exist through art must imitate the things that are in nature.”

The principle of art is the human intellect.
The human intellect “derives the light of intelligence” from the Divine Intellect.
The principle of nature is the Divine Intellect.
Art must then imitate Nature.

2. Human Sciences: Speculative & Practical

“The human sciences that deal with natural things are necessarily speculative, therefore, while those that deal with things made by man are practical or operative according to the imitation of nature.”

Speculative Science – ordered toward the “knowledge of truth,” contemplation of “natural things.”
Practical Science – ordered toward a work, things made by man, that imitate nature.

Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas by Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-1497)

3. Human Reasoning: Moving from Simple to Complex

“Hence Human reason alone, operating from the complex to the complex, proceeds as it were from the imperfect to the perfect. Now since human reason has to order not only the things that are used by man but also men themselves, who are ruled by reason, it processeds in either case from the simple to the complex.”

Ordered Toward Things Used by Man – ships, houses, etc.
Ordered Toward the Order of Men Themselves – society

4. The Polis: The Highest Good Constituted by Human Reason

“And because the things used by man are ordered to man as to their end, which is superior to the means, that whole which is the city is therefore necessarily superior to all the other wholes that may be known and constituted by human reason.”

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Products of human reason, e.g., ships, houses, etc., exist that man may live well according to a specific aspect.
The City (Polis) is ordered to the satisfaction of all needs of human life, for the sake of living well.
The polis is thus the whole which orders the various needs and deals with the greatest good.

Aristotle, The Louvre - via Wikicommons Sting aka Eric Gaba

5. Politics: Necessary for the Perfection of Philosophy

“Since then that whole which is the city is subject to a certain judgement of reason, it is necessary, so that philosophy may be complete, to institute a discipline that deals with the city; and this discipline is called politics or civil science.”

For the perfection of human reason, all things that can be known by reason must be taught.
Human society can be known by reason.
Politics must then by a necessary science in order for the perfection of wisdom to take place.

6. Politics: The Moral Science

“It is obvious that political science, which is concerned with the ordering of men, is not comprised under the sciences that person to making or mechanical arts, but under the sciences that pertain to action, which are the moral sciences.”

Speculative Science – ordered toward the “knowledge of truth,” contemplation of “natural things.”
Practical Science – ordered toward a work, things made by man, that imitate nature.
– Mechanical: deals with external matter by action, e.g., the smith or shipwright
– Moral Science: action wich remains within the agent, e.g., deliberating, choosing, willing

St. Thomas Aquinas by Fra Angelico (1395 – 1455)

7. The Architectonic Science: The Perfection of Human Affairs

“If the most important science, then, is the one that deals with what is most noble and perfect, of all the practical sciences political science must necessarily be the most important and must play the role of architectonic science with reference to all the others, inasmuch as it is concerned with the highest and perfect good in human affairs.”

All other societies (household, neighborhoods, villages) are ordered according to the polis.
The Polis is the political whole, and other societies are sub-political parts (including man himself).

The mechanical arts “used by men are ordered to man as their end.”
The Polis orders all other sciences, because it deals with “the highest and perfect good in human affairs.”

Since Politics orders human affairs, it is the architectonic science.
Aristotle – “the philosophy that deals with human affairs finds its perfection in politics.” 

8. Practical Science: Action is Required

“And because it is a practical science, it manifests in addition how each thing may be realized, as it necessary in every practical science.”

Speculative & Practical Science: “arrive at knowledge of the whole by manifesting its properties and its principles from an examination of its parts and its principles.”
Practical Science: “it manifests in addition how each thing may be realized,” since the practical sciences deal with work.

SPL Recommended Reading
Aristotle’s Politics trans. Lord
Medieval Political Philosophy ed. Lerner & Mahdi