جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه « thomas aquinas » در نشریات گروه « علوم سیاسی »

Khawaja Nasir and his contemporary, Thomas Aquinas, are two prominent philosophers and theologians belonging to Abrahamic religions (Islam and Christianity). Considered as rationalistic and proactive, both scholars discussed religion and state in their works. The question arises as to whether they view the formation and administration of state as an exclusively religious–divine issue or a natural one related to the civil nature of mankind. Using a descriptive–analytical method, this paper tries to analyze Khawaja Nasir’s and Aquinas’ viewpoints in order to answer the above question. The data shows that both Aquinas and Khawaja Nasir consider the legitimacy of state as a matter of nature conditional on justice and wisdom regardless of whether state is divine or conventional. For Khawaja Nasir, the administration of Utopia is not limited to the prophets and imams—who are distinguished by divine inspiration—but the scholars who are distinguished by the power of reason are also entitled to the administration of Utopia. According to Thomas Aquinas, any government that acts justly and rationally is in the public interest and in line with human nature, so it must be obeyed.

There are certain debates on the proportionality of “Divine Law and Natural Law” in the context of rational discussions and revelation in the Christian world dating back to the Middle Ages. Saint Thomas was one of the theologians who took a different stance in late Middle Ages on proportionality of the Divine Law and the Natural Law. Until his time, the intellectual foundation of Aquinas encompassed two major contradicting groups, i.e. the first group prioritized revelation, consequently supporting superiority of Divine Law over reason and the second group favored superiority of reason over revelation and the Natural Law as such. Aquinas adopted a third approach by introducing Aristotelian philosophy, intending to establish a sort of “coordination” between reason and revelation. In terms of practical wisdom, he followed such coordination through conflation of Divine Law and Natural Law. Aquinas’s innovation manifested itself in politics with the centrality of state and law, i.e. secularization of politics. On this basis, we have studied Aquinas’s political philosophy through reviewing text- and thematic-based methodology of Quentin Skinner in its intellectual basis.

Legitimacy of government and trying to approve it is one of the important issues in politics. The present paper seeks to investigate the viewpoints of two great thinkers of the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas and Khwajah Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, regarding the legitimacy of government; (Problem) an issue which has not been investigated so far. Since Aquinas was brought up in a Christian-European tradition and Khwajah Nasir al-Din al-Tusi in an Islamic-Iranian one, the present paper tries to answer this question: What are the basis and forms of the thoughts of these two thinkers regarding legitimacy of government? (Question) This term, because of conflicting conceptual interpretations in the viewpoint of different theorizers, has gained different meanings and forms, as a result, the present article is an exploratory one and there is no hypothesis presented for it. (No Hypothesis) Therefore, the purpose of this article is investigating the interpretations of these two great religious thinkers without any evaluation of their viewpoints. (Objective) Research data are collected using library documentary methods and are analyzed in the framework of comparative method. (Methodology) Despite the significant similarity in the theoretical principles of Aquinas and Khwajah, because of divine principles, these two viewpoints are in opposing poles, thus, it can be said that conceptualization of the legitimacy of government depends on the ground on which conceptualization takes place. (Finding)