Consent, Custom, and the Common Good in Aquinas's Account of Political Authority

Abstract

According to Aquinas's view, while the mandate that political authority be instituted and exercised is an immediate consequence of the natural law precept that the common good be promoted, the question of who possesses political authority is settled by customary law. Samuel Beer's rival interpretation, one of the few attempts to discern Aquinas's view on political authority, is incompatible with Aquinas's explicit remarks on these matters. The present account provides an interpretation that both fits Aquinas's few explicit remarks about the source and form of political authority and explains the terseness of his remarks on that subject.