philosophy · 1260 – 1274
What Law Owes Reason
Aquinas argues that an unjust law is not a law at all, and that a law of any kind is a rational ordering measured against reason. The claim that legitimacy is a property of the rule's own structure — not of who enacted it — becomes the load-bearing stone under two millennia of later resistance, including the argument that a law adopted by a legislature is not thereby a rule anyone is bound by.
“Laws which are contrary to justice are not laws at all.”
Advances
- Natural law distinguished from the positive law of any given polity
- Unjust law dissociated from law proper, making legitimacy structural
- The ruler as the minister of the common good rather than its owner
Landmarks
1260 CE
Begins the Summa
Three books on what can be known, what is being, and how humans are to live.
1274 CE
The Second Book is completed
The Law questions of I–II, q. 90-97, carry the natural-law argument in full.
Who was arguing
Alignment stack at 1274 CE (0 of 20 techniques)
Techniques introduced in this era: