Aquinas / Selected Political Writings; Edited with an Introduction by A.P. D'Entrèves
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970. Early printing. Octavo, original green cloth, original dust jacket. Scratch to front cloth board, clean dust jacket with price sticker to inner flap, short closed tear to front panel, tiny abrasion to back panel. A near-fine copy. Item #739
"THE THOMIST IDEAL IS A TIMELESS IDEAL. ITS ADAPTATION TO CHANGE IS NO CONCESSION TO THE ZEITGEIST"
Handsome early Latin-English edition analyzing the political considerations in St. Thomas's philosophical works, an attempt at "the reconciliation of the classical and the Christian idea of the State."
Perhaps best known for the Medieval Contribution to Political Thought (1939), Alessandro Passerin d'Entreves was the Serena Professor of Italian at the University of Oxford from 1946-1957. D'Entreves stresses that Thomas's political thought was not biographical. Thomas was removed from the political developments of the era, so his theories have little to do with his relatively short and tranquil life lived in the confines of the cloister and the academy. The text is divided into two sections: Part I. Political Treatises, and Part II. From the Philosophical Works. Professor d'Entreves provided an Introduction in three parts: 1. The Approach to Politics, 2. Political Obligation, 3. Practical Politics.
"The political theory of St. Thomas Aquinas is thus but one aspect of his great enterprise of reconciling Aristotelianism and Christianity, of grafting on to the teaching of the Church the old and yet newly discovered wisdom of Greece." Translated by J.G. Dawson, with his brief Translator's Note appearing with Bibliographical Inclinations after the Introduction but before the text. First published in 1959, this was part of the publisher's series, "Blackwell's Political Texts" (General editors: C.H. Wilson and R.B. McCallum).
Price: $40.00