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Relation between Politics and Language in Thomas de Aquino's Thought

이향만 1

1가톨릭대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

Accepting Aristotle’s political theory, Thomas de Aquino explains that humans can live as a social being because they are endowed with social virtues.To fulfill the craving for knowledge and social need, language is the necessary tool. From this point of view, humans are born as political beings to live together in a community. Since language helps to create social division and labor cooperation, in this way, languageplaysan outstanding role in human social life. Influenced by Aristotle’s thought, Thomas also propagates that reason has an independent and original sphere like faith. Social law is the crystallization of language that constructs an intellect agent in a community. According to Thomas, political activity appears during the process of a law and as the established law becomes a canonized language. This is a process of escalation, which begins from oral discourse and results in canonized law. Nevertheless, is it possible, that the canonized law can maintain a natural influence over power as an escalating process? Sovereign power should develop naturally through oral discourse within the limits of a constitution. However, in reality it is difficult to give up the authority in the process of governing for the common good. This shows the limit of Thomas' political discourse.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.