Commentary on Aristotle's Politics

Translated by Ernest L. Fortin and Peter D. O'Neill

             Aquinas' commentary on the Politics, like his commentary on the Ethics, appears to have been composed between 1270 and 1272. It does not extend beyond Book III, chapter 8, and was completed by Peter of Auvergne, whose commentary follows that of Aquinas in the modern editions of the latter's works. The procedure of the commentary on the Politics is identical to that of the commentary on the Ethics. It is commonly believed that William of Moerbeke revised an earlier translation of the first three books of the Politics and provided the first Latin translation of the remainder of that work, ca. 1260. Although the division of moral philosophy into ethics, economics, and politics was already known, no use was made of any part of the Politics prior to that time. There is no mention of the Politics in the new statutes of the Arts Faculty at Paris in 1255. The canon and civil laws and such works as Cicero's De Officiis constituted the standard texts in the schools. As soon as it became available, the Politics exerted a wide influence. Lectures on the Politics were introduced at the Arts Faculty in Paris and then elsewhere. The same practice was soon followed by the religious orders. Besides the one by Aquinas, no fewer than six commentaries on that work, including those of Albert the Great, Peter of Auvergne (distinct from the complement to Aquinas' commentary mentioned above), Siger of Brabant, and perhaps Giles of Rome, are known to have been written before the end of the thirteenth century. (For a critical list of these commentaries, one may consult Martin Grabmann, Die mittelalterlichen Kommentare zur Politik des Aristoteles [Munich, 1941].) Albert's commentary was composed at approximately the same time as that of Aquinas. It is impossible to know which one came first. The influence of the Politics is also perceptible in numerous other works of that period, particularly those dealing with matters of ecclesiastical or imperial polity.

             The following passages are all new translations. The six lessons of Book III are here translated into English for the first time. The translation is based on the recent edition of the commentary on the Politics by R. Spiazzi, O.P.: S. Thomae Aquinatis, In Libros Politicorum Aristotelis Expositio (Turin, 1951), pp. 1-12 and 121-40. Italic numbers in brackets in the body of the translation refer to the pagination of the Spiazzi edition. For reasons of space, the text of Aristotle, which precedes each lesson in the commentary, has been left out, as also the words of Aristotle that Aquinas repeats in the text of the commentary itself in order to identify the precise passage to which he is referring. Aquinas' Proemium discusses the nature and necessity of political philosophy. The first lesson of Book I establishes the subject of that science. The first six lessons of Book III deal with the central question of the nature of citizenship.