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Natural law, in the Augustinian and Thomist sense, reflects not merely man’s nature as it is, but as it should be, accounting for the moral aspirations and moral instincts they believed were natural to man’s being. Natural law requires us to live justly: to live well in society, with love towards one another. What does it mean to love our neighbors politically? It means to live and govern in accordance with the “tranquility of order.” Responsibility for upholding this kind of peace is what “sovereignty” meant in the Augustinian era. Peace is not merely the absence of violence, but the presence of the conditions that enable flourishing. Just war is war that accords with justice: it is authorized political violence required to uphold love-directed justice. War is an instrument for defending and sustaining the tranquility of order, understood as an act of love for our neighbors and our enemies alike. With this framework, Augustinian thinkers generally favored humanitarian and state building interventions: military operations to protect the innocent, stop war crimes or crimes against humanity, punish tyrants and war criminals, and foster conditions of lasting peace and stability.
Exploring what theologians at the University of Paris in the thirteenth century understood about the boundary between humans and animals, this book demonstrates the great variety of ways in which they held similarity and difference in productive tension. Analysing key theological works, Ian P. Wei presents extended close readings of William of Auvergne, the Summa Halensis, Bonaventure, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. These scholars found it useful to consider animals and humans together, especially with regard to animal knowledge and behaviour, when discussing issues including creation, the fall, divine providence, the heavens, angels and demons, virtues and passions. While they frequently stressed that animals had been created for use by humans, and sometimes treated them as tools employed by God to shape human behaviour, animals were also analytical tools for the theologians themselves. This study thus reveals how animals became a crucial resource for generating knowledge of God and the whole of creation.
The history of medieval thought could be written in terms of limitations demanded from reason to make room for faith. The church would be depicted as an inherently thought-curbing institute that constantly and efficiently exerted pressure on intellectuals for the defence of orthodoxy. The study of the relationship between faith and reason has been overshadowed by the censorial act of the condemnation of 219 propositions in philosophy and theology by Bishop Stephen Tempier. The condemnation was portrayed as a response to the unbearable challenges to faith posed by the absorption of non-Christian philosophical learning. Jean Buridan alternated his metaphysics to accommodate the separability of accidents dictated by the doctrine of faith. The case of Albert the Great discussion of sodomy is another example of self-censorship that demonstrates the inability or unwillingness of intellectuals to disengage their thought from the constraints of orthodox religion. There were several strategies adopted by different intellectuals to legitimise physiognomy.
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