Browsing by Subject "Political philosophy."
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Item Aquinas on justice, judgment, and the unity of peace.(2014-06-11) Mathie, Mary Elise.; Nichols, Mary P.; Political Science.; Baylor University. Dept. of Political Science.St. Thomas Aquinas's chief contribution to politics is generally taken to be centered around his understanding of the law, and primarily focused on finding a transcendent basis for the authority of particular laws. In this dissertation, I argue that Aquinas is concerned rather to show that law is only properly understood as part of a regime. Nature, in Aquinas's political teaching is complex and not easily embodied in one natural ruler; on the contrary, the nature involved in natural law is best understood by means of a republican regime. My dissertation develops this focus in Aquinas's writing by exploring Aquinas's teaching on law, just war, punishment, and republican government, and their place in Aquinas's political thought. Aquinas argues that the human being is naturally and truly political—that is, the individual is ordered towards the goals of the city. The central argument of this dissertation is that Aquinas grounds the purposes of the city in the nature of the human being. In doing so, Aquinas does not appeal to human nature abstractly, but rather to the activity of human beings in community. Although Aquinas points to a transcendent basis for law, his political teaching suggests that we should discern policy from a human basis.Item From Neo-orthodox theology to rationalistic deism : a study of the religious influences on the development of John Rawls's political philosophy.(2013-05-15) Kim, Keeho, 1967-; Beckwith, Francis.; Church and State.; Baylor University. Institute of Church-State Studies.The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate that John Rawls’s early religious beliefs guided the development of his later political philosophy. By first analyzing A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin & Faith, I argue that the young Rawls’s embrace of Neo-orthodoxy shaped his later philosophical view of human dignity and that the central themes of his undergraduate thesis reappear in secular forms in his philosophical development, despite his abandonment of Neo-orthodox beliefs soon after World War II. I will trace the changes of Rawls’s view on his own religion through a comparison of his main works, from the young Rawls’s Neo-orthodox beliefs to the later Rawls’s rationalistic deism. In the mature Rawls’s political philosophy, I will show that the secular Rawls still holds the Good Samaritan’s ideals such as fraternity, mutual respect, love, and justice as the motivating forces behind the development of his two principles of justice and the duty of assistance. My conclusion is that even though Rawls gave up the basic beliefs of the Protestant Episcopal Church, he never abandoned the religious motivations that he held in his adolescence. Both the young Rawls’s theological work and the mature Rawls’s philosophical thought share the view that there are deep inequalities and other great evils in society and human history. As a solution, while the young Rawls appeals to the restoration of community through overcoming sin by faith, through A Theory of Justice (1971), Political Liberalism (1993), and The Law of Peoples (1999), the later Rawls pursues the establishment of the realistic utopia of a well-ordered society that will eliminate the great evils through the establishment of just social institutions. Moreover, I show that, contrary to his declared rejection of metaphysics in his theory of justice, Rawls engaged with metaphysical themes such as human nature, theodicy, moral motivation, and the problem of evil throughout his career, from his senior thesis to his later works. In the concluding chapter, I discuss the differences between the young and the later Rawls as he transitioned from Neo-orthodoxy to Rationalistic deism, nevertheless emphasizing that Christian values continued to motivate his work until the end. Key words: Neo-orthodox Theology, Moral Constructivism, Kantian Constructivism, Political Constructivism, International Morality, Just War, Urgent Human rights, Decency, John Rawls, Emil Brunner.