Book Reviews and Notices : Aquinas, Selected Political Writings. EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY A. P. D'ENTREVES; TRANSLATED BY J. G. DAWSON. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1948. Pp. xxxiii, 133. $2.25.)

• DOI: 10.1177/106591294900200431
• Author: Thomas I. Cook
• Date: 01 December 1949
• Published date: 01 December 1949
• Subject Matter: Articles

647
Aquinas, Selected Political Writings. EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
A. P. D’ENTREVES; TRANSLATED BY J. G. DAWSON. (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell. 1948. Pp. xxxiii, 133. $2.25.)
This work contains the Latin text and, on facing pages, an excellent
English translation of the following works of Aquinas: On Princely Gov-
ernment, Book I; On the Government of the Jews; Summa Contra Gen-
tiles; relevant sections from the Summa Theologica; Commentary on the
Sentences of Peter Lombard (Book II, Dist. 44, An. 2 and 3); the In-
troductions to Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics and Commentary
on the Politics of Aristotle. At last, therefore, the general student of poli-
tical theory has available all the essential discussions of major political
principles of the greatest medieval philosopher. Because the works of
Aquinas are so voluminous, his method of presentation by its very system
so puzzling to the ordinary modern reader, and his political thought largely
embedded in due subordination where it belongs within his total treatment
of God, man, and society, this extraction and organized presentation by
experts is of the highest value. It permits the student, without dispropor-
tionate effort, to study the careful analysis of fundamental and perduring
issues of politics by a mind at once subtle, powerful, moderate, exhaus-
tive, systematic, and undistracted by passing controversy or detailed prob-
lems of application. Its reading should lead to a better understanding of
contemporary Catholic politics, and to a clearer and more precise recog-
nition that the premises on which the greater part of modern political
thought rests are by no means beyond challenge.
Yet the text alone could well prove merely remote and seemingly
irrelevant were it not for the-brief, yet thorough, introduction of Pro-
fessor D’Entreves, a model of that type of functional essay. That essay,
after telling us who Aquinas was and what he was not, makes completely
clear his special contribution to political...