The Love of the Common Good | Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, OP

The Thomistic Institute

Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Thomism, Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality, Catholicism, Philosophy, Christianity

4.8 • 873 Ratings

🗓️ 17 August 2019

⏱️ 77 minutes

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Summary

Held each summer, The Civitas Dei Summer Fellowship Program supports rising scholars seeking to better understand the Catholic intellectual tradition. Sponsored by the Thomistic Institute and the Institute for Human Ecology, Civitas Dei Fellows spend a week together in Washington DC, examining the search for happiness as a fundamental end of the person and the polis.

The week-long seminar introduced students to foundational themes in philosophy, political theory, and theology, dealing with law, personhood, political life, and the search for happiness. The focus was on an introduction to foundations of political and moral theory of Augustine, Aquinas, and modern constitutional jurisprudence.

Speakers included Dr. Adrian Vermeule (Harvard Law School), Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P. (Dominican House of Studies) and Dr. Chad C. Pecknold (Catholic University of America)

For more information about upcoming TI events, visit: www.thomisticinstitute.org/events

Transcript

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0:00.0	So we'll pick up our discussion where we left off yesterday,
0:05.0	where we ended two days of discussion on how it is that for
0:10.0	Deconic Aquinas specifies exactly what a common good is and what the common goods are.
0:20.0	That goods are what all things desire,
0:24.6	and so much that they desire for their perfection,
0:26.6	they bear the note of final cause,
0:29.6	goods first of causes, and they're diffusive of themselves.
0:35.6	And then we saw yesterday specifically how for Aquinas the question of
0:40.3	the reality of the diffusion of the good and the fact that goods
0:44.3	diffuse themselves variously.
0:48.3	Some extend their goodness to many effects, many beings, others to fewer effects, fewer beings, still others, to one effect or one being.
0:59.9	This is the principle according to which goods self-order, create a kind of hierarchy.
1:06.1	Those goods, the lower end of the hierarchy are those that diffuse themselves, the least. Those are the highest, higher end of the hierarchy are those that diffuse themselves the least those
1:11.6	are the highest higher end of the hierarchy are those that extend themselves the most
1:16.6	and because they extend themselves the most they're the more communicative they're
1:22.6	the most extensive they're also the most attractive, and therefore demand a kind of
1:32.3	or demand the love that's commensurate to their excellence, to the nobility.
1:38.3	And then we specify really what for Aquinas the common good, properly speaking, is that they're goods of order, of which the human
1:49.3	person constitutes a material part.
1:53.3	And so what he has in mind specifically is, as common goods is the good of the family,
1:58.6	the good of the city, the good of the city, the good of the universe.
2:01.7	These occur naturally.
	...

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