Hubert Humphrey and Political Science

Abstract

This study argues that Aquinas’ account of tyranny grants citizens a surprisingly wide ambit for resistance to tyrants but that such actions demand a tall order for even the most virtuous citizens: knowledge of the hierarchy of ends in politics and the prudence to apply it under the pressure of a tyrannical government. We consider sections of the Summa Theologiae and De Regno, Aquinas’ most sustained discussion of tyranny, to demonstrate the theoretical illumination that the former provides of the latter. De Regno, we argue, presents a negative teaching of the best regime and citizen, one in which citizens are shown the need for their own virtue in discerning the roots of tyranny and their remedy. With the Summa, we show how such prudential decisions fit within the orders of charity and piety: the citizen must come to see love of country as intrinsically ordered to love of family and God. Ultimately, Aquinas’ resistance theory rests on a hierarchy of ends for civil government that orders both ruler and citizen to God.